THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

BY 

JOHN CARL PARISH 




LA SALLE TOOK POSSESSION IN THE NAME OF THE KING 

OF FRANCE (P- >87) 



Ctwe €ale3 of ti^e dEfreat t^alltv 

EDITED BY BENJAMIN F. SHAMBAUGH 



The 
Man with the Iron Hand 

BY 

JOHN CARL PARISH 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1913 



r^sz. 



COPYRIGHT, I913, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqj3 



Fz-i,. 



r- 



Let us picture in imagination the history 
of the Great Valley of the Mississippi as a 
splendid drama enacted upon a giant stage 
which reaches from the Alleghanies to 
the Rockies and from the Great Lakes 
to the Gulf of Mexico and through which 
the Father of Waters sweeps majestically. 
Let us people this stage with real men and 
women — picturesque red men and no less 
interesting white men, Indians, Spaniards, 
Frenchmen, Englishmen, explorers, warri- 
ors, priests, voyageurs, coureurs de hois, 
fur traders, and settlers. Let the scenes be 
set about the lakes, along the rivers, among 
the hills, on the plains, and in the forests, 
'Then, viewing this pageant of the past, let 
us write the true tales of the Great Valley 
as we write romance — with life, action, 
and color — that the history of our Great 
Valley may live. 

Benjamin F. Shambaugh 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is to present in read- 
able narrative form, yet with strict accuracy, 
some of the events which attended the coming 
of the French explorers into the Mississippi 
Valley, and to deal with these events as much 
as possible from the standpoint of the Indians 
whose country the white men entered. In other 
words, an effort has been made to place the 
reader in the position and environment of the 
native inhabitants in order that he may witness 
the coming of the whites through the eyes and 
minds of the Indians instead of viewing from 
the outside the exploration, by men of his own 
kind, of an unknown land peopled by a strange 
and vaguely understood race. 

For the sake of preserving the standpoint of 
the Great Valley, the story of explorations is 
centered about Henry de Tonty — the "Man 
with the Iron Hand" — who, unlike his leader 
La Salle, remained in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi and in close relations with its inhabitants 
for a quarter of a century. 

vii 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

This book is not in any sense fiction. It has 
been written directly from the original sources 
and from the best information available upon 
the life of the Indian at the time of the arrival 
of the whites. The sources consist mainly of the 
letters and relations of Father Marquette and 
other Jesuits, of Joliet and La Salle and Tonty, 
and the writings of the various friars, priests, 
and soldiers who accompanied them. A few 
fragments are accessible in manuscript form 
only; but the most important material has 
been compiled, edited, and published by Pierre 
Margry, John Gilmary Shea, B. F. French, 
Reuben Gold Thwaites, and others. 

Where conversations are given they have 
been taken from the reports of those who held 
them or heard them. Usually they have been 
translated literally from the French records. 
Sometimes the direct discourse has been turned 
into indirect, or abridged, and in a few cases 
the indirect has been turned into the direct 
form. 

The writings of the early explorers and priests 
abound in descriptive details of a climatic, phys- 
ical, or personal nature; and this information, 
wherever illuminative, has been drawn upon to 

• • • 

viu 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

reproduce as vividly and as truly as possible the 
conditions surrounding the events described. 

There is one secondary writer who will always 
deserve the gratitude of the student of subjects 
connected with the French and Indians in Can- 
ada and the Mississippi Valley, and acknowl- 
edgments are here made to Francis Parkman, 
not as a source of information — although his 
conclusions, drawn from an exhaustive study 
of original documents, are invaluable — but as 
a pioneer and unrivaled master in the field and 
a source of unfailing inspiration. 

There are many persons who have aided the 
work in various ways, and their assistance has 
been duly appreciated; but space will permit 
the mention of only two of them. The helpful 
criticism and suggestions of my wife through- 
out the entire preparation of the volume have 
materially benefited the text; and the constant 
advice and encouragement of the editor of the 
series. Dr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh, and his 
careful editorial revision of the manuscript have 
added much to the value of the book. 

John Carl Parish. 
Denver, Colorado. 



CONTENTS 



I. 


The Captive 


I 


II. 


The Coming of the Strangers . 


5 


III. 


Down the Great River 


19 


IV. 


The Captive Released . . . . 


33 


V. 


The Black Gown .... 


. 40 


VI. 


"The Iroquois are Coming" 


48 


VII. 


The Secret Council 


. 59 


VIII. 


The Fort Called Crevecgeur . 


70 


IX. 


The White Invasion 


. 79 


X. 


The Mysterious Hand . 


. 87 


XI. 


"We are all Savages" 


. 92 


XII. 


The Death of Chassagoac . 


• 99 


XIII. 


The Iroquois Come .... 


. 104 


XIV. 


The ScATiERiNG OF the Tribes . 


. 114 


XV. 


A Sioux War Party 


. 127 


XVI. 


The Land of the Sioux 


134 


XVII. 


A Buffalo Hunt .... 


. 142 


XVIII. 


The Miamis Repent 


150 


XIX. 


A Chief Come to Life . 


. 161 


XX. 


Strange Rites 


169 


XXI. 


The Lower Mississippi . . , . 
xi 


180 



CONTENTS 

XXII. The Gathering of the Tribes . 192 

XXIII. Fort St. Louis 204 

XXIV. The Lost Chief 213 

XXV. News from La Salle .... 220 

XXVI. An Ill-Starred Voyage . . .228 

XXVII. Hunting the Mississippi . . .237 

XXVIII. From the Gulf to the Illinois . 248 

XXIX. When he Left Them .... 256 

XXX. White and Red Savages . . . 264 

XXXI. ToNTY^s Heroic Venture . . 273 

XXXII. The Pitiful Remnant . . .281 



The frontispiece is from a painting by Frank T. Merrill 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 



The 
Man with the Iron Hand 



THE CAPTIVE 

A SUDDEN, far-off cry broke the stillness that 
had brooded over the long, low Indian lodges 
on the hill. Instantly the whole village awoke 
to intense excitement. Women dropped their 
work by the fireside; old men put away their 
long-stemmed pipes and leaped like young 
braves to the doors of the lodges; while in 
the fields young girls stood straight to listen. 
Again came the cry, but nearer now and as of 
many voices. From every lodge by the side 
of the river and on the hill came pouring the 
red-skinned villagers, their straight, black hair 
glistening in the sunlight. From the fields of 
corn and squashes and out from among the 
bean-vines came lithe maidens and sturdy 
Indian women; and from their play by the 
riverside naked children tumbled breathlessly 
into the open space before the lodges. 

I 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

In the distance, with wild, triumphant cries, 
came the war party for which the women and 
old men of the village had waited so long. Now 
they could see the gay feathers that decorated 
the heads and the red paint that smeared the 
bodies of the returning braves. Now they caught 
sight of scalp-locks waved in the air; and in 
the midst of the throng of warriors they saw 
the figure of a strange Indian lad plodding 
along between two tall braves. "Scalps and a 
captive" went up the cry from the waiting vil- 
lagers, and out into the open with shouts of 
welcome they poured to meet the home-coming 
band. 

It was an occasion long to be remembered. 
The women of the tribe gathered in the open, 
and with weird songs and wild music, with arms 
flung high and feet shuffling and leaping, and 
with bodies twisting and bending, danced the 
scalp dance. 

The captive was only a boy, who did not 
speak the language of the Illinois into whose 
triumphant hands he had fallen. He was a 
stranger in the midst of enemies. Sometimes, as 
he well knew, in the camps of the Peoria tribe, 
when darkness had fallen after a day of battle, 

2 



THE CAPTIVE 

captives were burned alive. Such a scene his 
terrified mind now pictured. He imagined him- 
self bound at the foot of a stake in the midst of 
a clearing. He could see flames reach out hun- 
grily and consume the dried sticks and under- 
brush. Each second they mounted higher, 
throwing a circle of light on a close-packed crowd 
of heartless and rejoicing Indians, who watched 
the growing flames leap up and lick at the limbs 
of the helpless captive tied to the stake. 

Perhaps, if he had been an Iroquois, burning 
would have been the young boy's fate. But on 
this particular occasion the Iowa River, which 
ran past the Peoria village, witnessed no such 
barbaric torturings, for the wife of the chief 
claimed the captive and took him to her own 
lodge, where in due time and with proper cere- 
mony he was adopted as a member of the chief's 
family. 

It was in some such train of events that this 
captive Indian boy came, with strange words 
upon his lips and fear in his heart, to live with 
the Peoria tribe of Illinois Indians. He had 
many forebodings, but with all his Indian imag- 
ination he could not foresee that from this vil- 
lage of his adoption h@ would set out upon a 

3 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

series of adventures such as no boy or man of 
his tribe had yet experienced — that he would 
pass through countries and among people like 
none he had ever known and come upon dangers 
that would make his capture in battle seem as 
tame as a day's fishing. 



II 

THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

It was many days later, and the quiet and 
beauty of June had come upon the Mississippi 
Valley. From in front of the Peoria lodges on 
the banks of the Iowa River, a slender trail 
slipped off across the prairies through two 
leagues of sunshine over a country fair to see, 
and came at length to the west bank of the 
Mississippi. But on this summer day no Indian 
traveled the pathway that led from the village. 
There was no one in the streets of the Indian 
town, and no movement to be seen save the slow 
rising of smoke from the tops of the three hun- 
dred lodges which dotted the hill like so many 
long arbors, with rounded roofs made water- 
proof by layers of plaited rush mats. But from 
the lodges came the murmur of voices, for in- 
side the windowless walls the Indians of the 
Peoria tribe were gathered. 

Down the center line within each lodge four 
or five fires were burning, and beside each fire 
two families made their home. Indian women 

S 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

squatted by the smouldering embers, or pounded 
corn into meal in stone bowls; while here and 
ihere on rush mats or on the dirt floor sat the 
men with tattooed and sinewy bodies, smoking 
long-stemmed pipes or mending bows. Against 
the walls brown papooses, on end in their cases, 
blinked at the light from doorway and fires or 
gazed stolidly and silently at nothing. Life among 
the lodges, except in time of war, was unevent- 
ful. Nor was there on this day in late June any 
reason to look for events other than those which 
had fallen upon the tribe for generations. 

Then of a sudden the village was startled by a 
shout. It was not that peculiar cry of war which 
sometimes echoed along the valley, nor yet the 
cry of returning hunters or warriors. It had an 
odd new note in it that halted the busy work of 
the Indian women and woke to activity the 
dreaming braves. Pipes were laid aside, stones 
with which the squaws were grinding corn fell 
quiet into the bowls, and papooses were forgot- 
ten as the villagers swarmed out of the lodges 
into the sunlight. 

Strange was the sight which met their curious 
gaze. There in the pathway that came over 
from the Mississippi were two men. The Peorias 

6 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

had seen no Indians like these. Although it 
was the month of June the strangers were cov- 
ered from head to foot with garments of cloth. 
One, a man yet in his twenties, was dressed in 
a coat and heavy breeches ; the other, a quiet- 
faced man somewhat older than his companion, 
wore a long black robe, gathered about his waist 
by a cord and reaching to his feet. Swung from 
this cord was a string of large beads from which 
hung a cross. 

Unannounced these strange beings had ap- 
peared in the pathway before the village almost 
as if dropped by some spirit from the sky. No 
paint was on their pale faces, no feathers in 
their hair. They carried no weapons and dis- 
played neither the pipe of war with its red paint 
and feathers nor the pipe of peace that told of 
the coming of friends. Yet there were those 
among the Indian villagers who doubtless knew 
whence the strangers came. Perhaps among 
them were some of the Illinois warriors who, 
six years before, had made a visit to a group of 
cabins many leagues to the north, on the shore 
of Lake Superior, and who had there seen the 
energetic fur traders, with their blanket coats 
and stout breeches, and the Jesuit priests who, 

7 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

dressed like this man in black gown and hood, 
had pushed their way into the villages all about 
the Great Lakes. Perhaps in the journeys which 
the Peorias sometimes made to the village of 
their Kaskaskia brothers over on the Illinois 
River, they had heard of the men with white 
faces who lived near Green Bay and at the 
Straits of Mackinac. 

The word quickly passed among the men of 
the Peoria village that these two strangers were 
of the great French nation from over the sea. 
Moreover, since it was customary for the 
Indian to be hospitable to peaceable visitors, 
these two men who had appeared so unexpect- 
edly in the pathway must be fitly welcomed. 
Four Indians — old men with authority in the 
tribe — stepped out from the crowd and ad- 
vanced down the path. They walked slowly, 
two of them holding above their heads in the 
glowing sunlight the calumets or pipes of peace 
decorated with feathers and finely ornamented. 
Without a word they drew near the strangers, 
holding their pipes to the sky as if offering 
them to the sun to smoke. Finally they stopped 
and gazed attentively, yet courteously, upon 
the white men. 

8 



cc 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

Then spoke up the man in the black gown. 
Who are you?" he said in a broken Algon- 
quian tongue. 

"We are IlHnois," the old men answered. 
There was pride in their tones, for the name 
Illinois means "the men" — as if no other 
Indians were so worthy to be called men. Then 
they gave the white men the pipes of peace to 
smoke and invited them to visit the lodges. 

Together the Indians and their guests walked 
up the path to the village. At the door of one 
of the lodges was an old man who stood naked 
and erect, with hands extended to the sun. 
Toward this lodge the strangers made their 
way; and as they drew near, the old man 
spoke: — 

"How beautiful is the sun, O Frenchmen, 
when thou comest to visit us! All our village 
awaits thee and thou shalt enter all our lodges 
in peace." 

Within the lodge were many of the tribe, and 
in their minds was great wonder as they looked 
upon the curious men from the East. The elders 
of the tribe again gave to the visitors the pipe 
of peace; and when they had smoked, the In- 
dians also drew upon the calumet, thus binding 

9 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

upon themselves peace and good will to their 
strange guests. 

A little way off was a group of lodges where 
lived tlie greatest chief of the tribe. When he 
heard of tlie coming of tlie white men, he sent to 
invite tliem to his lodge. The strangers accepted, 
and a great retinue attended them as they 
passed through the village. Eager to see such 
unusual visitors, the Indians followed them in 
tlirongs. Some lay in the grass and watched 
them as they passed by; others ran ahead, and 
tlien walked back to meet them. Yet without 
noise and witli great courtesy they looked upon 
the two white men. Finally they all came to 
tlie lodge of the Peoria chief. 

The chief stood in his doorway, while on either 
side of him stood an old man. Naked were the 
tliree, and up toward tlie sun they held the 
long-stemmed calumet. With a few dignified 
words tlie chief drew the white men into his 
lodge, where again they smoked togetlier in 
friendship. Then silence fell upon those within 
tlie lodge, for tlie time had come when the 
strangers should tell of their mission. Impas- 
sive but full of expectancy, the Indians waited. 
It was the man in tlie black gown who spoke; 

lO 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

and after the manner of the Indians he gave 
them four presents and with each present he 
gave them a message. 

Silently the red men listened as with his first 
present he told them of the object of his com- 
ing. He was Jacques Marquette, a priest of the 
Order of Jesuits, and his companion was Louis 
Joliet, a fur trader and explorer of the great 
French nation. They had come journeying 
peaceably to visit the tribes that dwelt upon 
the Mississippi, and they were eager to go as 
far as the sea into which the Great River 
flowed. 

Again he gave them a present and told them 
of the God of the white men, who had created 
the Indian as well, and who had sent the black- 
robed priests into the far corners of the earth 
to tell the Indians of his glory. Then a third 
present he gave to the Peorias and told them of 
the great chief of the French who sent word 
that he had conquered the fierce Iroquois and 
made peace everywhere. With the fourth and 
last present he begged the Peorias to tell him of 
the Indian nations to the south along the wind- 
ings of the great river and beside the sea into 
which it flowed. 

II 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

When the priest ceased speaking, the chief 
of the Peorias rose. Beside him stood an Indian 
boy of about ten years. He was not a Peoria, 
but the captive who had been taken in battle 
and adopted into the chief's family. Placing his 
hand on the boy's head, the chief spoke these 
words : — 

"I thank thee, Black Gown, and thee, O 
Frenchman, for having taken so much trouble 
to come to visit us. Never has the earth been 
so beautiful or the sun so bright as to-day. 
Never has our river been so calm or so free from 
rocks, which thy canoes have removed in pass- 
ing. Never has our tobacco tasted so good or 
our corn appeared so fine as we now see it. 
Here is my son whom I give thee to show thee 
my heart." 

Thus the captive Indian lad came to be one 
of the party of explorers and to share their 
strange wanderings and adventures in the Great 
Valley. 

As the priest spoke of the God of the French 
who had sent his men across seas and into for- 
ests, the Indian chief, and those who sat with 
him, thought of their own manitous and gods, 
and of their own medicine men who understood 

12 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

and knew the powerful spirits, and by prayers 
and incantations could influence them to bring 
sunshine to ripen the corn and rain in time of 
drought, to guard them in warfare, and to cure 
them in sickness. This black-robed priest must 
be a great medicine man in the lodges of the 
whites ; and so the chief said : — 

"I beg thee to have pity on me and on my 
nation. It is thou who knowest the Spirit who 
made us all. It is thou who speakest to Him and 
hearest his word. Beg Him to give me life and 
health and to come and dwell with us that we 
may know Him." 

Then the chief gave the priest a pipe like that 
which the two old men had carried. It was 
carved, and decked with the plumage of birds, 
and its stem was as long as a tall brave's arm. 
It was a token of peace which the white men 
would often need in the countries they were 
about to explore. With this present the Peoria 
spoke of the love he bore for the great chief of 
the French. 

With another present he warned the white 
men of the dangers ahead of them; and he 
begged them not to go farther. Tribes fierce 
and deadly lived toward the south, and other 

13 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

dangers more mysterious and awful lurked along 
the waters of the river. But the gentle-faced 
priest replied that he had no' fear of death, say- 
ing that_he counted no happiness greater than 
to die teaching of his God. 

Amazed were all the Indians who sat in the 
chief's lodge and heard this answer. To scalp a 
foe in honor of one's manitou and to the glory 
of his nation seemed the height of joy and tri- 
umph; but they could not understand the cour- 
age of one who would willingly be scalped or 
tortured in honor of his God. So they made no 
reply and the council closed. 

Meanwhile among the lodges Indian women 
and girls had busied themselves in preparing a 
feast for the strangers. Papooses were hung up 
out of the way on trees or leaned against the 
lodge walls while their mothers brought corn 
and meat, stirred the fires, and killed a dog for 
the distinguished guests. A woman whose nose 
had been cut off as a punishment for unfaith- 
fulness to her husband came out of a near-by 
lodge. Young girls, whose daily duty it was to 
care for the rows of corn and beans in the fields, 
now helped to bring into the lodge the food 
which the women had made ready. 

H 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

The first course at this Peoria feast was saga- 
mite, a dish made from the meal of Indian corn 
and seasoned with fat. It was served on a great 
wooden platter. An Indian, acting as master of 
ceremonies, took a spoon made from the bone of 
a buffalo, filled it with sagamite, and presented 
it several times to the mouths of the strangers 
as one would feed children. Then they brought, 
fresh from the fires which the Indian women 
had tended, a dish containing three fish. The 
same Indian took the fish, removed the bones, 
blew upon some pieces to cool them, and fed 
them to the guests. The third course, which 
was served only upon rare and highly import- 
ant occasions, consisted of the meat of a dog 
freshly killed. To the great surprise of the 
Indians the white men did not eat of this 
dish, and so it was taken away. The fourth 
course was buffalo meat, the choicest morsels 
of which were given to the priest and his com- 
panion. 

After this elaborate feast, the Peorias took 
their visitors through the whole village, and 
the open-mouthed and open-hearted Indians 
brought them gifts of their own make — belts 
and bracelets made from the hair of buffalo or 

IS 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

bear and dyed red, yellow, and gray. At length 
when night came upon the Peoria lodges, 
Marquette and Joliet were made comfortable 
on beds of buffalo robes in the lodge of the 
chief. 

In the afternoon of the next day the strangers 
departed from the Indian lodges on the Iowa 
River and followed the pathway back to the 
bank of the Mississippi; and with them, cour- 
teous to the last, went the chief and full six hun- 
dred members of the tribe. When they came 
out upon the river bank, the Indians gazed in 
wonder at the five white men who had been left 
by their leaders to guard two small canoes — 
small, indeed, in comparison with the great 
boats of the Peorias which, hollowed out of 
three-foot logs, were half a hundred feet long. 

The sun was about halfway down the sky 
when the strangers embarked. The Peorias, 
gathered on the bank, looked on curiously as 
the two white men and the Indian boy joined 
their companions in the birch-bark canoes, 
pushed out from the shore, swung into the cur- 
rent, and paddled off downstream. Then they 
faced the dropping sun and walked back to the 
village. As they thought of the savage tribes to 

i6 



THE COMING OF THE STRANGERS 

the south and the awful dangers of the river, 
they doubted greatly if the gallant strangers 
would again come to their village and pay 
them the visit which the black-robed priest had 
promised. 

They did see these same voyagers again, but 
not in the village by the side of the Iowa River; 
for during that very summer the Peoria tribe 
moved. One day the Indian women stripped 
the lodgepoles, packed up the camp imple- 
ments, loaded themselves with supplies of food 
and robes, and together with the men of the vil- 
lage started on a journey eastward which led 
them far beyond the Mississippi. On the banks 
of the Illinois River, not far from the lake that 
still bears their name, the Peoria women set up 
new lodges and kindled the fires that were to 
burn day and night in the new home. Farther 
up the same river another tribe of the Illinois 
Nation — the Kaskaskias — were living in a 
village on the north bank. 

Between these two Illinois towns the young 
braves no doubt often passed during the sum- 
mer of 1673 ; and as they sat by the fires of their 
Kaskaskia brothers and smoked the long calu- 
mets, the Peorias told of the coming of the 

17 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

whites to the village beyond the Mississippi and 
of their departure with the Indian boy to jour- 
ney down the length of the mysterious river to 
the great salt sea of the south. 



Ill 

DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

A BLACK-ROBED pricst, a young fur trader, 
five Frenchmen, and a young Indian boy sat in 
two birch-bark canoes on the broad current of 
the Mississippi River one summer evening. 
Having eaten a hurried supper beside a camp- 
fire on the bank, they paddled on down the 
darkening river so that the fire might not 
betray them to Indian enemies. Night over- 
took them and they anchored their canoes in 
midstream. Leaving one man on guard, the 
rest of the party made themselves as com- 
fortable as possible in the narrow boats and 
tried to get some sleep. 

The sentinel sat silent in his canoe, but with 
every sense alert. Through the long hours of 
night he watched with keen eye for unnatural 
shadows in the dim light of moon or stars and 
listened for sound of paddle or stir of wild 
animals. The adventurers were in a strange 
country and they knew not what dangers might 
lurk beside them while they slept. 

19 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

The Indian boy, into whose valley the stran- 
gers had come, knew the ways of the night 
upon river and shore, but he was now in strange 
company. It may be that he, too, was awake, 
thinking over in his childish heart the curious 
ways of these white men. The Peoria village 
where he had so lately made his home was many 
leagues up the river. What lands were they 
coming to? When would the monsters of the 
■* river, of whom his people had told him, swal- 
low them, canoes and all, into a terrible death ? 

When a certain constellation crossed the 
zenith the sentinel reached over and waked one 
of his comrades, then joined the others in sleep. 
At length the darkness began to lift, as to the 
left the faint light of dawn crept up over the 
rocky bank of the river. Soon the Frenchmen 
awoke, took to their paddles, and began an- 
other day's journey. 

Each stroke of the paddles carried the Indian 
boy farther from his home and nearer the mon- 
sters of the great river. By training a keen 
observer, he looked up at a steep wall of rock 
and caught sight of two strange and fearsome 
figures. Terror possessed him, for he knew he 
was in the presence of the dread beings of which 

20 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

his people had warned him. There, painted on 
the rocks in red, black, and green colors, were 
two monsters as large as buffalo calves. They 
had faces like men, but with horrible red eyes, 
and beards like those of bull buffalo; and on 
their heads were horns like the horns of deer. 
Scales covered their bodies;, and their tails were 
so long that they wound about the body and 
over the head and, going back between their 
legs, ended in the tail of a fish. 

It was as if the Indian boy were alone with an 
evil spirit, for no Indian was near him. He 
could ask the white men no questions. They, 
too, now saw the dread animals; and with much 
pointing and excitement began to talk among 
themselves, but in a tongue the Indian boy 
could not understand. Not daring to look long 
at the pictured rock, he turned his face away 
and sat in his narrow seat uncomforted and 
filled with that mystic awe which only people of 
his own race could feel. The white men talked 
on as the canoes swept smoothly downstream. 

Suddenly as they talked a dull roar met their 
ears, growing louder as they descended the river 
until they saw a great opening in the bank at 
the right and a broad river pour in from the 

21 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

northwest to join them. It was the Missouri 
coming down from the mountains a thousand 
miles away and hurling into the Mississippi a 
mass of mud and debris, huge branches, and 
even whole trees. The two canoes dodged here 
and there, while the men at the paddles, alert 
now and forgetful of painted dragons, drove 
their craft now to the right, now to the left, 
swerved to avoid a great tree, or paddled for 
their lives to outrace a mass of brush. Vigorous 
work alone saved them. 

Out of danger, the adventurers fell to won- 
dering from what lands came the mighty stream. 
The stout-hearted Marquette vowed to stem 
its powerful current at some future day and fol- 
low its waters to their source, thinking that he 
might thus find another stream which would 
take him westward into the great Vermilion 
Sea that lay on the road to China. But the 
Indian boy did not easily forget the monsters 
on the rocks, and he still looked about him with 
apprehensive glances. 

It was not many leagues farther down the 
stream that the voyagers came to another of 
the fearful dangers of which the Peorias had 
warned them — a place in the river where, 

22 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

according to Indian legend, there lived a demon 
who devoured travelers and sucked them down 
into the troubled depths. As they approached 
the dreaded spot, they saw a fierce surging of 
the waters, driven with terrific force into a 
small cove. Rocks rose high out of the stream; 
and against these the river dashed mightily, 
tossing foam and spray into the air. Balked in 
their course, the waters paused, then hurled 
themselves down into a narrow channel. 

To the Indian mind, which saw life and 
humanity, good spirits and bad, in all of nature, 
there was an evil spirit in these turbulent wa- 
ters. It was with the eyes of his own race that 
the Indian boy now watched the high-tossed 
spray. But the two canoes passed by in safety 
and soon came to smoother waters. 

Presently the voyagers drew near the broad 
mouth of the Ohio, in whose valley, raided 
from time to time by fierce tribes of the Iro- 
quois, were the villages of the Shawnee Indians. 
Along the shores were canes and reeds that 
grew thick and high. Mosquitoes began to 
gather in swarms that made life miserable for 
the men as they toiled in the heat of the day. 
But following the way of the Indians of the 

23 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Southern country, they raised above their 
canoes tents of canvas which sheltered them in 
part from both the mosquitoes and the burning 
sun. 

So saiHng, they came one day unexpectedly 
upon a group of armed Indians. Up rose Mar- 
quette and held high the pipe of peace, while 
Joliet and his comrades reached for their guns 
to be ready should an attack be made. This 
time, however, they were safe; for the Indians 
were only inviting them to come ashore and eat. 
The voyagers landed and were led to the village, 
where the Indians fed them upon buffalo meat 
and white plums. 

It was evident that these Indians were 
acquainted with white men, and that they 
bought goods of traders from the East; for they 
had knives and guns and beads and cloth and 
hatchets and hoes, and even glass flasks for 
their powder. Venturesome Englishmen from 
the Atlantic Coast had perhaps sold them 
these things in exchange for furs. With the 
Spanish firmly settled in the Southwest, and the 
English — long-time enemies of France — push- 
ing in from the East, it was high time that the 
French came down the river, if the Great Valley 

24 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

of the Mississippi were ever to be brought under 
the flag of France. 

The Indians now told Marquette and Joliet 
that the great sea to the south was only ten 
days' journey away; and so with renewed 
energy the band of eight set out once more in 
their canoes. Huge cottonwoods and elms now 
lined either shore, and bright-plumaged birds 
darted from limb to limb; while in the hidden 
prairies beyond could be heard the bellowing of 
wild buffalo. 

As they drew near a village of Michigamea 
Indians, whose lodges were almost at the 
water's edge, the voyagers heard the savage 
yells of warriors inciting one another to an 
attack. Soon they swarmed along the shore 
with bows and arrows, and with hatchets and 
great war clubs. In vain did Marquette hold up 
the calumet of peace. Downstream the Indians 
climbed into their long dugouts and pushed up 
to attack the strangers from below; while up- 
stream other young warriors launched their 
wooden canoes and swept down the river with 
hoarse cries of battle. Hemmed in by the two 
war parties in boats, and with armed enemies 
howling along the river bank, death seemed 

25 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

very near to the Frenchmen. The warning 
words of the Peoria chief had told them of just 
such an end. 

Perhaps the twinkling lights of the Canadian 
river towns and the smiling face of France had 
never seemed so far away as now in these un- 
traveled stretches of the Great Valley. And the 
Indian lad — before him lay either death or 
captivity. In just such scenes as this he had 
passed from tribe to tribe. It may be that his 
young mind now carried him back to the village 
where the smoke rose from the lodges of his 
own people, where his own mother had un- 
loosed the thongs that bound him to the cradle 
of his papoose days, and taught him to run over 
the green prairies and in the cool woods with 
the other lads, learning to draw a bow and trap 
wild creatures of the forest and roll about in the 
sun, naked and healthy and happy. 

But this was not a time to think of other 
days. A handful of young braves threw them- 
selves ;,into the river to seize the small canoes 
of the white men; but finding the current too 
strong, they put back to the shore. One raised 
his club and hurled it at the black-robed priest. 
Whirling through the air it passed over the 

26 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

canoes and fell with a splash into the river. 
Nearer and nearer closed the net of enemies 
about them, until from every side bows began 
to bend and arrows drew back, tipped with 
death. 

Suddenly their weapons dropped. Older men 
among them, perhaps recognizing for the first 
time the pipe of peace which Marquette still 
held, restrained the impetuous young braves. 
Coming to the water's edge as the white men 
drew nearer, two chiefs tossed their bows and 
quivers into the canoes and invited the stran- 
gers to come ashore in peace. 

With signs and gestures Indians and white 
men talked. In vain did Marquette try, one 
after another, the six Indian languages which he 
knew. At length there came forward an old 
man who spoke a broken Illinois tongue. 
Through him Marquette asked many questions 
about the lower river and the sea. But the 
Indians only replied that the strangers could 
learn all they wished at a village of the Arkansas 
Indians, about ten leagues farther down the 
stream. The explorers were fed with sagamite 
and fish; and, not without some fear, they spent 
the night in the Indian village. 

27 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

The next morning they continued their jour- 
ney, taking the old man with them as an inter- 
preter; and ahead of them went a canoe with 
ten Indians. They had not gone many leagues 
when they saw two canoes coming up the river 
to meet them. In one stood an Indian chief 
who held a calumet and made signs of peace. 
Chanting a strange Indian song, he gave the 
white men tobacco to smoke and sagamite and 
bread made from Indian corn to eat. Under the 
direction of their new guides the Frenchmen 
soon came to the village of the Arkansas, which 
lay near the mouth of the river of that name. 

Here under the scaffold of the chief they were 
given seats on fine rush mats. In a circle about 
them were gathered the elders of the tribe; and 
around about the elders were the warriors; 
and beyond the warriors in a great crowd were 
the rest of the tribe eager to see and hear the 
strange men who had come down from the 
north. Among the young men was one who 
spoke the Illinois tongue better than the old 
man, and through him Marquette talked to the 
tribe. In his talk he told of the white man's 
religion, and of the great French chief who had 
sent them down the valley of the Mississippi. 

28 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

Then he asked them all manner of questions 
about the trip to the sea. Was it many days' 
journey now? And what tribes were on the 
way? 

It was only on occasions like this that the 
jfndian boy understood what was said, for 
usually his companions in the canoes spoke the 
melodious but to him wholly unintelligible 
French. He now listened to the Illinois tongue 
with keen interest. The young interpreter was 
telling of their neighbors to the north and east 
and south and west. Four days' journey to the 
west was the village of an Illinois tribe, and to 
the east were other friendly people from whom 
they bought hatchets, knives, and beads. But 
toward the great sea to the south, where the 
white men wished to go, were their enemies. 
Savage tribes with guns barred them from 
trade with the Spaniards. All along the lower 
river the fierce tribes were continually fighting; 
and woe betide the white men if they ventured 
farther, for they would never return. 

As the Indians told of the dangers of the river 
below the mouth of the Arkansas River, large 
platters of wood were continually being brought 
in, heaped with sagamite, Indian com, and the 

29 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

flesh of dogs. Nor did the feast end before the 
close of day. 

Meditating upon the warnings of their hosts, 
the white men made ready for the night. When 
they had retired on beds raised about two feet 
from the ground at the end of their long bark- 
covered lodge, the Indians held a secret council. 
Some of the warriors had looked with envious 
eyes upon the canoes, clothes, and presents of 
the whites. Why not fall upon the strangers by 
night, beat out their brains with skull-crackers 
or Indian war clubs, and make away with the 
plunder.'' To some of the covetous Indians it 
was a tempting plan. The whites were defense- 
less and hundreds of leagues from their friends. 
Who was there to avenge their death ? 

But to the chief, who had welcomed the 
visitors with the pipe of peace, the bond of 
friendship was sacred. He broke up the schemes 
of the treacherous braves, dismissed the coun- 
cil, and sent for the white men. Then with the 
pipe of peace in his hand he danced before the 
strangers the sacred calumet dance; and as he 
closed the ceremony he gave into the hands of 
Marquette the calumet. It was a token, sacred 
among all Indians, that peace should not be 

30 



DOWN THE GREAT RIVER 

broken, and that the whites would be unharmed. 

The Frenchmen, however, did not sleep much. 
Joliet and the priest sat up far into the night 
and counseled together as to whether they 
should go on to the sea or turn back. They 
were now very near to the sea, they thought — 
so near that they were confident that the river 
continued southward to the Gulf of Mexico, 
instead of turning to the west or east to the 
Vermilion Sea or the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, 
they believed that in two or three days they 
might reach the Gulf. 

But in the country between the mouth of the 
Arkansas and the mouth of the Mississippi 
skulked fierce and murderous tribes; while not 
far away were the Spaniards. Should they fall 
into the hands of enemies and lose their lives, 
who would tell to France the story of their 
marvelous journeyings? Their beloved nation 
would lose all knowledge of their expedition 
and therefore all claim to the Great Valley by 
right of their exploration. Then, too, there 
seemed little more to be learned in traveling the 
balance of the way to the mouth. Joliet was 
anxious to report to his government the story 
of the expedition, and Marquette was full of 

31 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

eagerness to tell his brother priests of the 
Indians whom he had met and the great work 
that lay open to their missionary efforts. 

As a matter of fact, the voyagers were many 
a long day's journey from the river's mouth. 
But happy in the thought that they were 
nearly there, Joliet and the priest at last deter- 
mined to turn back upstream and carry to New 
France the wonderful tale of their pioneer voy- 
age down the great untraveled river. 



IV 

THE CAPTIVE RELEASED 

It was about the middle of July, 1673, when 
the Arkansas Indians saw the band of white 
men leave their village to start out upon the 
return voyage. The weeks that followed their 
departure from the Arkansas town were full of 
toil for the voyagers; for now in the heat of 
summer they must paddle against the current 
of the greatest of American rivers. At length, 
coming to the mouth of the Illinois and believ- 
ing that it offered a shorter route than the one 
by which they had come, they turned into its 
waters and paddled up its smooth stream 
toward the Lake. 

In the course of this journey up the Illinois 
River they came one day, with great surprise, 
to a village in whose lodges lived the same 
Peoria Indians whom they had last seen on the 
other side of the Mississippi, in the town on the 
bank of the Iowa River. The Peorias, too, 
were surprised to see the seven white men and 
the Indian boy come paddling up the stream. 

33 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Here the tired voyagers were welcomed with 
such hospitaHty that they lingered for three 
days in the village. The Indian boy renewed 
old acquaintances, while Marquette passed 
from lodge to lodge, telling the Indians of the 
God of the French who had guarded them in 
their long journey and protected them from 
pestilence and the disasters of the river, and 
from torture and murder by hostile tribes of 
Indians. The Peorias in turn told the priest of 
their brother tribes along the Illinois River and 
of the wars they waged together against the 
Sacs and Foxes of the North and the bands of 
Iroquois from the East. But as they looked 
into the face of the priest, they saw lines of suf- 
fering and sickness, and they knew that he had 
not borne with ease the long and arduous trip. 

When the voyagers made ready to depart, the 
Indians gathered at the river bank to bid them 
good-bye. As they were about to embark, some 
Indians brought to the edge of the stream a sick 
child and asked Father Marquette to baptize it. 
With great joy the priest complied, for it was the 
first and, indeed, the only baptism on the whole 
summer's voyage. A few minutes later the little 
child died. 

34 



THE CAPTIVE RELEASED 

The canoes were then pushed into the stream, 
the men dipped their paddles, and, rounding a 
point of land a short distance up the stream, 
disappeared from view. The group of Indians 
turned back to the village, bearing the body of 
the dead child. They wrapped it tenderly in the 
skins of wild animals and laid it away on a scaf- 
fold of poles high above the reach of prowling 
wolves. 

Autumn came upon the land and through the 
fallen leaves along the shore the young Indians 
passed back and forth among the villages on 
the Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt 
farther up the river, the Peorias learned that 
Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper 
village, and that the black robe had promised 
to come again and preach to them. Moreover, 
when they left this village, one of the chiefs of 
the nation, with a band of his own men, went 
with them up the river, across the portage, and 
as far as the Lake of the Illinois — as they 
then called Lake Michigan. There they left the 
white men paddling valiantly up the west shore 
toward Green Bay and the Jesuit Mission of 
St. Francis Xavier. 

35 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

At Green Bay, Marquette stopped with his 
brother priests and tried to gain strength 
enough to return to the Illinois villages. But 
Joliet went farther. Taking the Indian lad with 
him, he journeyed as far as the settlement at the 
Straits of Mackinac. There the young Indian 
spent such a winter as he had never known 
before. About him were the great log lodges of 
the French; and in the streets of the little town 
walked men of strange and curious ways. There 
were dark-bearded traders, priests with black 
robes and cowls, trappers and coureurs de hois in 
blanket coats, and fur caps; and Indians, from 
about the Great Lakes, gathered there to sell 
furs and buy the white man's guns and liquor. 

The Indian boy soon began to understand 
and talk the language of the white men, and by 
the end of the winter he could even read and 
write a little in French. He was quick to learn 
the ways of the Frenchmen; and his many 
attractive qualities endeared him to Joliet . 

When the spring of 1674 came on, Joliet and 
several Frenchmen embarked in a canoe and 
began the descent of the Great Lakes. They 
were bound for the home of the governor of 
New France at Quebec, high on the rocks beside 

36 



THE CAPTIVE RELEASED 

the St. Lawrence. As a gift to the governor, 
Joliet was taking the Indian boy who had 
shared his wanderings in the Great Valley. 

Joliet and his companions were weeks upon 
the journey, paddling steadily by lake shore and 
river, through straits and past wooded islands. 
Only once were they compelled to carry their 
canoe over a portage. At last they came near to 
the town of Montreal, with the high hill rising 
up behind it. They were nearly home now, and 
the heart of Joliet must have leaped high as he 
thought of the long months he had spent on his 
perilous journey. Soon he would come in tri- 
umph before Frontenac, governor of Canada, 
and tell him of his explorations and put into his 
hands his map and papers and the precious 
journal of his voyage. These documents lay be- 
side him in the bottom of the canoe in a box, 
together with some relics of the far-away valley 
of the Mississippi. 

Only La Chine Rapids — the Sault St. Louis 
as they were then called — lay between the 
voyagers and Montreal, and then the road was 
clear and smooth to the high rock of Quebec. 
The canoe entered the swift-running water. 
Foam-covered rocks swept past them. Many a 

37 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

time had Joliet passed through these rapids. 
Probably, after all the perils through which he 
had safely come on the Great River, he looked 
only with joy upon this familiar rush of waters. 
Perhaps to the Indian boy came the thought of 
the demon whom his people feared in the surg- 
ing waters of the Mississippi. Surely another 
such demon lived in this troubled passage, with 
death in its relentless grasp. 

As if to prove real the fears of the Indian, the 
demon of the water reached out a great wet 
arm and overturned the frail canoe. Tossed 
into the fierce current were Joliet and his French 
boatmen, the Indian boy, and the precious box 
of papers ; while downstream went blindly bob- 
bing the bark canoe. Wildly the men struggled 
in the rushing stream, the current all the while 
wrenching at their legs and playing with their 
feeble efforts. Joliet fought till the breath was 
gone from his lungs and the strength from his 
limbs. Then he lost consciousness. 

The unpitying sun made a long arc in the 
heavens above the tossing human bodies. Four 
hours had Joliet been in the water when fisher- 
men pulled him out on shore and brought him 
back to life. Two of his men were drowned; and 

38 



THE CAPTIVE RELEASED 

his precious box of papers lay somewhere be- 
neath the rushing waters. 

And the Indian boy? He, too, had given up 
to the evil spirit of the rapids. No more would 
he pass like a waif from tribe to tribe; no 
longer would he try with eyes and tongue and 
fingers to learn the ways of his new white 
friends. Forever he had left the rolling hills and 
streams of the Great Valley, the green prairies 
so full of sunshine, and the woods so full of 
game. He had passed to the happy hunting- 
ground of his people. 



THE BLACK GOWN 

In the valley of the Mississippi it was sum- 
mer again. Father Marquette, still sick, had 
not come back to the Illinois tribes. The 
Peorias and Kaskaskias, in their two villages 
on the Illinois River, lived comfortable, happy 
lives, for theirs was a beautiful and fertile val- 
ley in these sunny summer months. In the rich 
soil of the prairies the Indian women had 
planted seeds which had been carefully pre- 
served from the year before. And now in the 
fields the young girls were working among the 
long rows of Indian corn and tending the bean- 
vines. In their season melons and squashes 
grew plentifully. The woods along the river 
were full of game; and in the quiet water of the 
Illinois, fish by the hundred swam to and fro, an 
easy target for the swift-winged arrow of the 
Indian youth. Far back on the plains roamed 
great herds of buffalo, which afforded both 
sport and food for the Indians. When fall came, 
the Indians would surround a herd of buffalo 

40 



THE BLACK GOWN 

and then set fire to the prairie, taking care to 
leave an open space by which the frightened 
animals could escape. As the big animals passed 
out through this break in the circle of fire, they 
were easily shot by the Indian hunters. 

All up and down the river and over on the 
Lake of the Illinois, the winter of 1674 fell upon 
the land with stinging fierceness. The air was 
so cold that it was almost brittle. The winds 
howled and swept through the valley with 
gusts that drove the Indians chilled to their 
firesides ; while the snow, as it piled higher and 
higher, often brought despair to the men scat- 
tered far and wide on their long winter hunts. 
Sometimes the deer were so lean as to be 
scarcely worth the shooting. From the Missis- 
sippi to the cold shores of the Lakes the men of 
the Illinois tribes were hunting and trapping 
and trading furs. 

One day during this bleak winter there came 
striding into the village of the Kaskaskias an 
Indian of great note among the Illinois. He was 
Chassagoac, the famous Kaskaskia chief and 
fur trader. Having just come from the upper 
shores of Lake Michigan, he reported that near 
Green Bay he had come upon Father Mar- 

41 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

quette with two Frenchmen, setting out at last 
for the villages of the Illinois. Coming into 
camp with a deer on his back, he had shared his 
meat with these white men and on the next day 
had set out with them down the west shore of 
the Lake. The courageous priest was still far 
from well, but he was determined to keep his 
promise to the Illinois Indians. Accompanied 
by a number of Illinois men who were out on 
the winter hunt, and by the Illinois women who 
had packed the canoes and equipments across 
the portage from Green Bay to the Lake, the 
party made their way slowly southward along 
the shore. 

Father Marquette spent part of the time 
teaching the Indians; while his two men, Pierre 
and Jacques, mended the guns of the Indian 
hunters and went out with them in search of 
game. Their canoes were too frail to stand 
much of the weather that now hung about the 
edge of the Lake. Floating ice drove them 
ashore again and again. Rain, sleet, and fierce, 
chilling winds kept them off the water for days 
at a time, while deep snows impeded their pro- 
gress on land. 

Early in December, they reached the mouth 

42 



THE BLACK GOWN 

of the Chicago River, where, moving inland a 
few leagues, the white men built a rude cabin 
and made ready to encamp for the winter. 
Marquette still suffered greatly and could go no 
farther. Here Chassagoac and his Illinois fol- 
lowers left the party and came on to the village; 
but not before they had bought of the whites, 
for three fine beaver skins, a cubit of the French 
tobacco. Then they had journeyed on to bring 
the news that the Black Gown would come in 
the spring. Great was the rejoicing among the 
Illinois. 

Weeks had passed when Jacques, the priest's 
servant, came to one of the Illinois camps and 
told of how the Black Gown lay sick in the 
cabin near the Lake. Thereupon the Indians 
sent back a delegation with corn and dried 
meat and pumpkins and beaver skins. With 
these presents they asked for powder and other 
merchandise. The priest replied that he had 
come to encourage peace — that he did not 
wish them to make war upon the Miamis — 
and so he could not send them powder; but he 
loaded them down for their twenty-league jour- 
ney with hatchets and knives and beads and 
mirrors. 

43 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Now it happened that there were two white 
traders who had also ventured into the land of 
the Illinois ; and from their cabins they brought 
supplies to the sick priest. One of these men, 
who called himself a surgeon, stayed awhile at 
the lonely cabin of Marquette, glad to hear 
mass and do what he could to relieve the suf- 
ferings of the black-gowned father, i 

It was with exceeding great joy that the 
white men in their cabin near the Lake and the 
Indians in their hunting-camps and villages 
along the river welcomed the warmer winds 
from the south that broke up the ice in the river 
and unlocked the wintry hold that had bound 
the land. Wild animals appeared and meat 
became plentiful once more. The snow melted 
down into rushing streams or sank into the 
friendly earth. As the sun became warmer at 
midday, the Indian women prepared for the 
season of planting. 

On the 8th day of April, in the year 1675, a 
shout of welcome went up in the Kaskaskia 
village, for the long-expected priest had come. 
This quiet man, kind of face and gentle of man- 
ner, found himself among friends who looked 
with sorrow at the signs of sickness graven 

44 



THE BLACK GOWN 

upon his patient face. They knew as well as he 
that he had not many months to live. But they 
saw also upon his face a wonderful joy, for the 
priest had accomplished the one great purpose 
that had upheld him in the weary weeks of suf- 
fering — he had come again to preach to the 
Illinois Indians. 

In one cabin after another the good Father 
spoke to the chiefs and warriors who gathered 
to hear him. Finding the cabins too small, he 
held a great meeting in the open air on a broad 
level prairie. Here the whole village gathered. 
The chiefs and elders seated themselves next to 
the priest; and around them stood hundreds of 
young Indian braves; and still farther from the 
centre of the vast circle of red men were 
gathered the women and children of the tribe. 
For a long time he talked to them, and with 
each message he gave them presents after the 
manner of Indian councils. 

This was the last visit of the black-robed 
priest to the Illinois Indians. His strength soon 
failed him, and with Jacques and Pierre he 
started back up the river and across to the 
Lake, hoping against hope that he might reach 
the Mission of St. Ignace at Mackinac before he 

45 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

died. Friendly Indians went with them more 
than thirty leagues of the way, contending with 
one another for the privilege of carrying his few 
belongings. 

Finally they reached the Lake and em- 
barked. Jacques and Pierre paddled the canoe 
along the shore, as each day the priest grew 
weaker. He had always prayed that he might 
die like his patron saint, St. Francis Xavier, in 
the far and lonely wilderness of his ministry. 
One Friday evening, about the middle of May, 
he told his companions with great joy that he 
would die on the morrow. As they passed the 
mouth of a small river, Marquette, pointing to 
a low hill rising beside it, asked his two men to 
bury him there. 

They carried him ashore and built for his pro- 
tection a rude cabin of bark. There he died 
quietly on Saturday, May i8, 1675. He was 
buried by his two men on the rising knoll which 
he had chosen ; and over his grave they rang his 
little chapel bell, and erected a rude cross to 
mark the spot. 

Some time later a party of Kiskakon Indians, 
returning from a hunting trip, came by the site 
of the lonely grave. They had known Father 

46 



THE BLACK GOWN 

Marquette years before when he lived on the 
shores of Lake Superior. Now they deter- 
mined to carry his remains to the church at the 
Mission of St. Ignace. Reverently they gathered 
up the precious bones, dried and prepared them 
after their own Indian fashion, laid them in a 
box of birch bark, and bore them in state with 
a convoy of thirty canoes to the Mission at 
Mackinac. There in a vault of the church the 
remains of Father Marquette were laid away 
with funeral honors; and there priests and 
traders venerated his memory and Indians 
came to pray at his tomb. 

And out in the valley of the Illinois, the 
tribes to whom he had made his last pilgrimage 
mourned the death of their gentle-spirited 
visitor; and the Peorias, as they went about 
their daily occupations in fields or lodges, on 
the prairies or on the streams, often thought of 
the day in June when the black-robed priest 
and his French companion had walked up the 
little pathway and stood out to meet them in 
the glorious sunshine at their old village on the 
banks of the Iowa River. 



VI 

"the IROQUOIS ARE COMING " 

"The Iroquois are coming!" It was a cry 
that shook the heart of even the boldest among 
the Illinois Indians. Fierce as the northwest 
wind in winter, the cruel, bloodthirsty red men 
from the East had spread terror in their path 
all along the Great Lakes and out as far as 
the Mississippi. Down near the mouth of the 
Ohio, Marquette and Joliet on their memorable 
voyage in 1673 had found the Shawnee living 
in deadly fear of the warriors of the Five 
Nations. 

Five years had passed over the lodges of the 
Peorias and Kaskaskias since that memorable 
summer; but fear still hung about the villages 
of the upper basin of the Great Valley. Three 
years of winter and summer hunts, of ripening 
corn and snow-locked landscape, had come and 
gone in the valley of the Illinois since the black- 
robed Marquette, gentle-faced and sick unto 
death, had bade farewell to the young Kaskas- 
kia Indians and journeyed off with his two men 

48 



"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING" 

along the shore of the Lake of the IIHnois, 
never again to be seen aUve save by his two 
faithful companions. 

Through all these years the Indian women 
whispered their fears among themselves in the 
lodges; and the men, as they chipped their 
stone arrow-heads or shaped their strong bows, 
prayed to their manitous that if the Iroquois 
should come, the stone tips might fly straight 
and sure, lest their lodges be burned and the 
naked, howling men of the East carry torture 
and death among their women and children. 

The Iroquois did come. It was in the year 
1678 that war parties of these fierce tribes de- 
scended upon the valley of the Illinois. Out on 
the wooded plains the allied tribes advanced to 
meet them; while the women and children and 
the old men of the villages waited in dread and 
fear till runners came breathless to tell them of 
the repulse of the hated foe. This time the vil- 
lages were saved, but fear did not 'die out with 
the victory. The valley lay like an ancient 
stronghold whose defenders had fought the be- 
siegers away from the walls, yet slept on their 
arms in constant dread of a still more deadly 
attack. 

49 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

In this same year of 1678, Allouez, another 
black-robed priest, came to settle among the 
Indians of the Kaskaskia village. He had come 
out to them for a few weeks in the spring of the 
year before, when eight of the tribes of the 
Illinois Nation were gathered at the village of 
the Kaskaskias that they might be in constant 
readiness to repel invasions of the Iroquois, 
Now the priest had come to stay, to baptize 
their children, and to teach them more about 
the strange manitou of whom Marquette had 
first told them. A huge cross, twenty-five feet 
high, had been erected in the middle of the 
town, and the Indians listened respectfully 
while he chanted the mass and preached to 
them. 

The winter with its long hunting season went 
by; the river froze over and thawed out again; 
the time of planting came once more; and the 
children again played in the sun through the 
long hours of summer. So events moved on 
toward the strange happenings of the winter 
that followed. In the Kaskaskia village the 
women and girls had gathered the harvest of 
Indian corn and had stowed it away in caches or 
pits dug in the ground, lined with rushes and 

SO 



"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING" 

twigs and covered over for the long winter. It 
was a precious store, for it must provide corn 
for the spring sowing and food until the next 
harvest came around again. Then as the leaves 
dropped one by one from the trees along the 
river and the colder winds came, the whole vil- 
lage went off for the winter hunt. 

It was the night before Christmas In 1679, 
and Allouez, the black-robed priest, still lin- 
gered in the Kaskaskia village, thinking, more 
than likely, of Christmas Eve in his beloved 
France far across the ocean, where amid the 
lights of a hundred candles priests were con- 
ducting midnight mass. Or perchance he 
thought of the high rock of Quebec where a 
frontier settlement held frowning watch above 
the river. Even it was hundreds of leagues 
nearer civilization than he. 

But hark! There was a sound that brought 
the priest out of his reveries and back to the 
forest and rocks along the snow-skirted river of 
the wilderness. Out of the darkness came a 
group of Indians — young braves from some 
wandering bands of Miamis and Mascoutins. 
Well did Allouez know these tribes, for he had 
lived with them years before in their village near 

SI 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

the portage of the Fox River. Strange and 
exciting was the news which they brought him 
this night. Alarm deepened on the priest's 
face as he gathered his few belongings and 
made his way across the snow and through the 
woods to the village of the Miamis and Mas- 
coutins. 

The village of the Kaskaskias, on the north 
shore of the Illinois, now lay silent and de- 
serted. The lonely lodges and the well-filled 
caches alone gave evidence that the Indians 
would return. Many leagues down the river 
was the village of the Peorias. Here, too, the 
young men were off on the winter hunt; but the 
older men and the women and children were 
still at the village. With them was Nicanope, 
brother of Chassagoac, and many others of the 
Kaskaskia tribe. 

Not a hint of the message that brought such 
alarm to Allouez at the upper village had come 
to the Peorias. Aside from the ever-present 
dread of the Iroquois, that lurked in each 
Indian's mind, they lived as peacefully as the 
hardships of winter would permit. Smoke from 
their lodges rose up into the wintry sky, or 
veered off to the south and east when the blasts 

52 



"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING" 

of wind swept across the plains. The river was 
open, and by the bank on either side lay 
pirogues — heavy canoes fifty feet long and big 
enough to hold more than a score of men. 

Less than two weeks had passed since AI- 
louez had fled from the upper village. The sun 
had been up an hour or more, and the Peoria 
village was bustling with life. Warriors and old 
men stalked here and there in their winter gar- 
ments of buffalo hide, or sat smoking and gaz- 
ing placidly upon river and sky. The ever busy 
women sat weaving rush mats or bestirred 
themselves in gathering wood. Children played 
about in the open, and on the sunny side of the 
lodges zealous mothers had already set up on 
end the brown papooses bound like little mum- 
mies in the cradles. 

Then, stirring the village as an arrow startles 
a covey of birds, came the wild cry, "The Iro- 
quois." From behind a jutting point up the 
river swept a long line of canoes. Indescribable 
confusion followed. On both sides of the river 
men sprang for their bows and arrows; while 
women, hardly pausing to seize their babes, 
scuttled away between the lodges and on to the 
friendly woods back on the hill. With them 

53 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

went the young girls and children, fleeing like 
scared rabbits. 

Meantime the current of the river bore the 
canoes down to the village. They turned to the 
left, and a tall figure leaped from the nearest 
canoe to the bank and then stood quietly 
watching the confusion of the villagers. Some 
of the warriors fled to the woods with the 
women. Others with eager weapons were about 
to attack the newcomers, when a cry from one 
of their chiefs on the other shore made them 
pause. He had seen that, although the men 
from the canoes, armed with guns and ready 
for war, could have shot down a dozen Illinois 
in their first confused scramble for weapons, 
they had not fired a single shot. These men 
were evidently not Iroquois, but Frenchmen 
who seemed bent on peace rather than battle. 

Quickly the calumet was raised by the reas- 
sured Peorias, and another was offered by the 
French. The canoes were drawn up to the 
bank, and together the white men and the vil- 
lagers went to the lodges. Old men reappeared 
from the woods and women came out of their 
hiding-places. Children with wary eyes looked 
up into the faces of three friars. Fathers of the 

54 



"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING" 

Recollet Order with gray robes and pointed 
cowls, who took them by the hand and poured 
out friendly but unintelligible words. 

In the lodges the warriors and chiefs — now 
that the fear of an Iroquois attack had subsided 
— welcomed the visitors with every sign of 
good will. They rubbed their feet with bear's 
oil and the fat of buffalo and fed them with the 
best the village had to offer. Then they sat 
down for a council of peace, ready to hear the 
message of the white men. Chassagoac was 
away on the hunt, and so his brother Nicanope 
was the highest in rank of the Indian chiefs who 
were present. 

There were bold men among the French in 
this council ; and the Indians gazed with kind- 
ling eyes upon the tall figure of the white chief 
who had first leaped from his canoe, and upon 
the dark face of another man who seemed to be 
next in command. This second man had sat in 
the canoe at the farther end of the line that had 
swept down to the village. He was among the 
last to come ashore; but something unusual 
and strangely awkward about his movements 
caught the quick attention of the Indians. In 
the council, however, their eyes turned from the 

55 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

swarthy, black-haired lieutenant to the tall 
white leader as he rose to speak. 

Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was a 
man still under middle age, but an indomitable 
will and a restless and unceasing activity had 
already crowded his years with the experiences 
of an ordinary lifetime. No Indian could look 
upon his cold, finely chiseled features and un- 
flinching eyes without feeling the relentless 
force of the man. They listened with quiet 
attention to his words. 

He offered them a present of Martinique 
tobacco and some hatchets, saying that first of 
all he wished to tell them of a thing he had done 
and explain it to them. A few days before he 
and his men had come to the village of their 
brother tribe, the Kaskaskias, many leagues up 
the river. The village was empty where they 
had hoped to find friendly Indians with food. 
Unable to kill game, they were in danger of 
starvation. They well knew how precious was 
the corn hidden in the caches of the deserted 
town, but in their extremity they had borrowed 
some; and now they wished to pay for it in pres- 
ents or to return it to the Peorias if the Indians 
could not spare it. At the same time he added 

S6 



"THE IROQUOIS ARE COMING" 

that if they could not let him have food for his 
men, he would go down the river to their neigh- 
bors, the Osages, and there set up the forge 
which he had brought to mend their knives and 
hatchets and make them new tools for the war- 
path and the chase. 

Behind the impassive faces of Nicanope, 
Omawha, and other chiefs were minds alive to a 
new situation. This man was not a mere black 
robe, come among them to preach and to baptize 
their dying; nor was he a lone trader, a coureur 
de bois^ passing by in his bold profession of 
trapping, hunting, and trading furs. Here was a 
great chief with men at his back, a warrior with 
fire-spitting guns, a trader with canoes full of 
hatchets and knives and tobacco and a forge to 
keep their weapons in order and to make them 
new ones. Surely he was a great and powerful 
man who had come into their country this cold 
winter day, and well would it be for the tribes 
of the Illinois if he stayed among them. 

But what is this he is saying.^ He speaks of 
the Iroquois. They, too, are subjects of the 
King of the French. Yet if the bold Iroquois 
should fall upon them. La Salle and his follow- 
ers would be with the Illinois, would give them 

57. 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

guns, and would help them protect their vil- 
lages from the onslaughts of the Five Nations. 
Only they must let him build a fort near their 
village for the protection of his men. He wished, 
also, to build a great canoe, big enough to hold 
all his men and goods, and by means of it to 
travel down the Illinois to the Mississippi and 
thence on its broad current to where it emptied 
into the Gulf of Mexico — so that he might 
bring back more hatchets and presents. 

The Indians were overjoyed. Many of the 
Kaskaskias were present, and among them was 
Nicanope, one of their chiefs. They told La 
Salle to keep the corn he had taken at the upper 
village, and begged him to stay among them 
and set up his forge and build his fort. If he 
wished to descend the river that flowed through 
the length of the Great Valley, he would find 
it an easy waterway and the country through 
which it flowed a land of beauty and plenty. 

Finally the conference broke up and the 
Indians retired to their own lodges in great 
happiness of mind. Among them none was hap- 
pier than Chief Omawha, for La Salle had 
shown him special favor and had given him 
two hatchets and a number of knives. 



VII 

THE SECRET COUNCIL 

Night came on cold and still. In the river 
the floating particles of ice grew into a solid 
sheet until the stream was covered from shore 
to shore. La Salle, having retired with his men 
to the quarters assigned, set guards about the 
lodges and dropped off to sleep. In their own 
long lodges the Indians rolled up in blankets 
and dreamed perchance of the warpath and the 
triumphant return of warriors bearing the 
scalps of the Iroquois. 

In the darkness off to the northeast half a 
dozen Indians quietly filed along the trail 
toward the village. They were loaded down 
with burdens. Into the village they slipped 
stealthily and came to the lodge of the chief. 
Soon furtive figures of Indian men were creep- 
ing from this lodge and that until the chiefs and 
warriors had gathered in a secret night council 
with the strangers from the northeast. 

La Salle and his men slept on in peace, while 
Nicanope and Omawha and their friends sat in 

59 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

a circle and listened to the words of the noc- 
turnal visitors. Monso, a Mascoutin chief, was 
the spokesman, and with him were five or six 
Miamis. The burdens they bore were kettles 
and hatchets and knives, as presents to accom- 
pany the story they had come so secretly to 
tell to the Illinois. And this was their message. 
La Salle was a friend of the Iroquois. Even now 
he was on his way to the enemies of the Illinois 
on the Great River beyond. He would give 
these foes arms and ammunition and come back 
with them from the west while the Iroquois 
closed in from the east. Thus, surrounded and 
trapped, the Illinois would meet their ruin. 
Their only hope was to prevent La Salle from 
going farther and from joining their enemies on 
the Mississippi. 

Monso told his message with effect; and fear 
fell upon the men of the Peoria village as they 
pondered over the warning which had come to 
them in this weird night council. Beneath the 
dirt floor of the lodge they buried the presents 
which Monso had brought. The strangers, hav- 
ing given their disquieting news, slipped out 
into the dark and disappeared as quietly as 
they had come; while the Peoria men crept 

60 



THE SECRET COUNCIL 

back to their lodges and tried to forget the 
alarm which Monso had brought into the 
village. 

At the secret council in which Monso and 
the Miamis told their story there was one who 
did not share the fear of his fellows; but he 
said nothing. The chief Omawha sat quietly 
throughout the council and passed out with his 
brother chiefs without a word. But in the early 
morning he came in secret to La Salle and un- 
folded to him the story of the night. 

As on the face of the river that had frozen 
over since the arrival of the French, there had 
come by morning a change in the mood of the 
Illinois Indians. Yesterday they were happy 
and friendly, full of smiles and good words for 
La Salle and his dark-skinned companion and 
the score and more of their men. To-day they 
were cold and suspicious. They believed Monso 
and feared — feared for their homes and for the 
lives of every man, woman, and child of the 
tribes. The dread of the Iroquois rose fresh in 
their minds as they saw in the powerful French- 
men the allies of their enemies. The cold sun 
of winter rose to its highest in the sky and 
started on its journey down to the west. Some- 

6i 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

thing must be done and at once or they were 
lost. 

Nicanope sent word to the lodge of La Salle 
that he was preparing a feast for him and his 
men. Presently through the streets of the 
Indian town stalked the strange procession of 
white men on their way to the feast. From the 
entrance of every lodge curious Indians watched 
the visitors pass. Most of them, perhaps, fol- 
lowed the movements of La Salle — long of 
limb and steadfast of face, with keen eyes, and 
hair that flowed down over his collar. But 
many eyes strayed from him to his dark-faced, 
black-haired companion, who appeared to be 
second in command and whose right arm as he 
walked hung by his side with a peculiar heavi- 
ness. This man was Henry de Tonty ; and in all 
the Western world there beat no braver heart 
than his. Nor did the gallant La Salle have 
truer friend and follower in the troublous days 
that were at hand. 

Besides these two men there were perhaps 
thirty Frenchmen — some of them weather- 
beaten with many years' experience in the 
wilds, and some of them young and not long 
arrived from distant France. Here also were 

62 



THE SECRET COUNCIL 

three long-robed and sandaled friars, not 
gowned in black like Marquette and the lately 
departed Allouez, but in gray gowns and hoods. 
One was young and short and vigorous ; one was 
old, yet full of spirit. The third walked with 
a pompous tread, and a complacent pride sat 
upon his round face. 

Into the lodge where the feast was to be given 
the white men filed and seated themselves with 
the chiefs and men of the Illinois tribes. Less 
than twenty-four hours had passed since the 
midnight visitors from the Miami village had 
told their tale in low voices in the same lodge. 
It was not alone a feast that was to be cele- 
brated; for in the minds of the Illinois was the 
determination that these bold men should be 
stopped by some means from going on to incite 
their Western enemies. As they looked upon 
the two leaders and their company, hostile were 
their thoughts, though their eyes did not show 
it. Yes, La Salle and his men must be stopped. 
And so as they squatted on mats on the earth- 
en floor of the lodge and waited for the feast, 
the chief Nicanope rose and began to speak. 

He had not brought the white men there, he 
said, so much to feast their bodies as to cure 

63 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

them of the strange madness which possessed 
them of going on down the Mississippi. No one 
went there except to his death. Terrible tribes 
who by force of numbers could overwhelm the 
French dwelt along the shores. The waters of 
the river were full of huge serpents and deadly 
monsters. Even if their great canoe saved them 
from these perils, the channel of the river ran 
over rapids and fell in torrents over steep prec- 
ipices, and finally shot down into a great abyss 
where it was lost under the earth, and no living 
man knew where it went. Such would be the 
awful fate of the French if they pursued their 
journey farther. 

The Peorias squatted in silence as they lis- 
tened to the chief's warning. Suruly the white 
men would not venture into such dangers. 
They watched the faces of La Salle and his 
followers for some flicker of fear. Upon the 
countenances of La Salle and Tonty no shadow 
moved. Here and there among their men were 
coureurs de bois — men who had lived in the 
Western country and who understood the words 
of Nicanope. They translated them in whispers 
to their comrades. Uneasy looks crossed the 
faces of these less experienced adventurers, and 

64 



THE SECRET COUNCIL 

the keen eyes of the Peorias caught flashes of 
fear and dismay on the face of many a French 
voyager. Their own hearts rejoiced at these 
signs of alarm, but their faces showed nothing 
save calm unconcern. 

But in the words of La Salle they found little 
comfort when in turn he rose to reply. For the 
kindness of Nicanope in warning them, he 
thanked him most cordially. But he was not 
daunted. If the dangers were great so much 
greater would be their glory. Frenchmen were 
happy, he said, to perish in carrying the name 
of their great chief to the ends of the earth. He 
believed that the story of deadly perils related 
by Nicanope was prompted either by the 
friendly desire of the Illinois to have the white 
men remain in their village or else by some evil 
spirit who had whispered words of distrust. If 
the Illinois were in truth friendly to him, let 
them tell him frankly of the things which dis- 
turbed them. Otherwise he must believe that 
the friendship they had first shown came only 
from their lips. 

Nicanope, discouraged at the failure of his 
ruse, made no reply, but presented his guests 
with food. When they had eaten sagamite and 

6s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

venison and buffalo meat in silence, La Salle 
once more rose and continued his speech. He 
was not surprised to find the other tribes 
jealous of the advantages about to be enjoyed 
by the Illinois from their relations with the 
French, nor was he surprised that the other 
tribes should start false rumors ; but he was as- 
tonished that the Illinois should believe those 
tales and hide them from him who had been so 
frank. Then he turned and directed his words 
to the astounded Nicanope : — 

"I was not asleep, my brother, when Monso 
last night in secret told his tales against the 
French and said that I was a spy of the Iro- 
quois. Under this very lodge the presents with 
which he tried to persuade you of the truth of 
his story are still buried. Why did he take his 
flight so quickly? Why did he not speak to you 
by daylight if he spoke the truth?" 

The Illinois sat silent, but with agitated 
minds. Amazement and awe filled their wary 
eyes. What manner of man was this who, 
though asleep in his lodge, divined the hidden 
secrets of their midnight council? What great 
medicine gave him power over the things of the 
night as well as the day? Could he read their 

66 



THE SECRET COUNCIL 

thoughts ? The ringing voice of the white man 
continued : — 

"Do you not know that, had I wished, in 
your confusion at my arrival, I could have 
killed you all? What need had I of Iroquois 
allies ? Could I not this very hour with my sol- 
diers slaughter all your chiefs and old men while 
your young men are off on the hunt ? Look at 
our burdens. Are they not tools and merchan- 
dise for your benefit rather than weapons with 
which to attack you? Run after this liar 
Monso. Bring him back and let him face me 
whom he has never seen, yet whose plans he 
pretends to know." 

There was a short pause. Nicanope had no 
word to say. Monso was gone and a snow had 
fallen upon his tracks. They could not trace 
him and bring him back. Their plans had 
failed. The leader of the French was to them 
now a man of wonder as well as fear. Only 
Omawha of all the Illinois understood, but he 
said not a word. Red men and white passed out 
from the feast and returned to their lodges. 
The wooded hills across the frozen river swal- 
lowed the winter sun and early twilight closed 
down upon the white landscape. 

67 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

By the lodges given up to the Frenchmen, 
La Salle set a guard, and then lay down to sleep. 
Tonty, after a last look at the village, turned in 
among the robes. In the other lodges, stretched 
upon mats and wrapped in buffalo skins, Indian 
men lay sleeping or thinking of the strange hap- 
penings of the night and day that were gone. If 
any had watched, as mayhap they did, they 
would have seen a second nightly gathering — 
this time in the shadows of the Frenchmen's 
lodges. Six figures stealthily exchanged words 
and signs; and then without noise crept past the 
farthest lodge and out across the snow toward 
the village of the Miamis whence Monso had 
come. They were some of those Frenchmen 
upon whose faces the observant Indians had 
seen signs of fear at the words of Nicanope. 

An hour went by, when a new light began to 
touch the sky and the woods. Out from the 
lodge of La Salle the tall figure of the leader 
stepped into the cold morning air. He looked 
about in surprise. Not one of his men was to be 
seen on guard. With quick, fierce stride he vis- 
ited one after another of the lodges. In one of 
them he found only a single Frenchman, whose 
companions had not taken him into their plot. 

68 



THE SECRET COUNCIL 

Tonty, awaking, found his leader beside him 
with serious news upon his lips. Six of their 
men — cowards and knaves — had preferred 
the dangers of exposure and starvation to the 
dangers which Nicanope had described. They 
had taken advantage of their position as guards 
to desert their leader in the hope of reach- 
ing the village from which Monso had come. 



VIII 

THE FORT CALLED CREVECCEUR 

For ten days the air was snapping with cold, 
and the river beside the Peoria village remained 
frozen. In the hearts of the Peorias lingered the 
chill of fear, for in spite of his denunciation of 
Monso they could not banish their doubts of the 
French chief; and the dreaded Iroquois inva- 
sion, which had haunted them for years, was 
very present in their thoughts as the French- 
men passed among them. 

When Indians once see fear betrayed in pub- 
lic, they never forget; and now for some of La 
Salle's men the Peorias had only contempt, for 
not all of those who had shown fear at the words 
of Nicanope had fled to the woods. Others of 
the French, such as Ako, the coureur de bois, 
were of a different breed. Bold, strong, experi- 
enced in woodcraft by many years in the wilds, 
they commanded at least consideration from the 
Indian warriors. 

As for the three gray-robed friars, they did no 
harm and there was a curious mystery about 

70, 



THE FORT CALLED CREVECCEUR 

their ceremonies that pleased the Indians' child- 
like hearts. One of these friars — Father Henne- 
pin — looked far more like a man who loved the 
world and the joys of life. He strutted about 
the village with all priestly meekness smothered 
by his interest in his surroundings. Very con- 
scious was he of his own greatness, and well 
satisfied that without him the little band of 
French would be in sore straits. 

It was with different feelings that the Peorias 
looked upon La Salle and Tonty. They feared 
them greatly and still retained their suspicions, 
but with their fear and suspicion there was also 
respect and awe. They recognized in them 
the qualities an Indian loves — strength, utter 
fearlessness, and a determination that breaks 
down all obstacles. About each of these men 
there was mystery which baffled the wits of 
the Indians and excited their interest even 
more than did the medicine men of their own 
tribes. 

Of the past of these two remarkable men the 
Indians knew nothing; they could not read the 
tale of danger and hardship that had marked 
the years of La Salle, or the story of the pitfalls 
and snares laid by his enemies for his destruc- 

71 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

tion. They could not know that at Fort Fronte- 
nac, when La Salle was on his way to their 
country, one of his men had put poison in his 
food. Nor did they know of the incident at the 
Miami portage, where one of his followers, 
walking behind, had raised his gun to shoot his 
leader in the back and was prevented only by 
the quick arm of a comrade. They knew that 
six of the men had deserted and gone off into 
the woods, but they did not know that on that 
same day in their own village another of his 
treacherous knaves had again tried to poison 
him. 

They knew nothing of the early experiences 
of Henry de Tonty, of the seas he had sailed 
and the fights he had fought by land and water 
in the service of the King of France. Nor did 
they yet know the faith with which he served 
his leader and friend La Salle. But a sure in- 
stinct told the red men that here were two men 
whom they would love as friends or fear as 
enemies. 

One chill day followed another. Most of the 
young men were still off on the hunt and war- 
path. Those who remained at home mended 
their weapons, smoked, and idly watched the 

72 



THE FORT CALLED CREVECCEUR 

women at work on mats and robes — but never 
for a moment let go the thought or sight of the 
white strangers in their midst. 

In the middle of January the ice melted, the 
air dropped its sting, and the friendly earth 
appeared from beneath the snow. La Salle and 
the friar Hennepin stepped into a canoe and 
paddled down the river to a point half a league 
below the village. Soon Tonty and the rest of 
the band joined them. On the left-hand side of 
the river, two hundred paces from the edge of 
the water, rose a small hill. In front of it there 
was a stretch of low swampy ground, and on 
either side were deep ravines. 

The inquisitive Indians who slipped along the 
shore to watch the movements of the white men 
saw them at work digging a ditch behind the hill 
to connect the two ravines. Around the edge of 
the hill a line of earth was thrown up, making a 
wall which sloped down into ditch and ravine 
and marsh. Then a palisade of logs was erected 
twenty feet high. Inside this stockade in two 
corners the busy Frenchmen built lodgings for 
themselves, a cabin for the three friars in the 
third corner, and a storehouse in the fourth. 
Along the rear wall the forge was set up, and in 

73 



THE FORT CALLED CREVECCEUR 

the very midst of the inclosure were the quar- 
ters of La Salle and Tonty. To this stronghold 
beside the Illinois River, La Salle gave the name 
of Fort Crevecoeur. 

Another work that astonished the Indians 
still more went on at the bank of the river. 
Here the men felled great trees, hewed them 
into timbers, sawed planks, and began to build 
a mighty canoe such as the men of the tribe had 
never seen. With a forty-foot keel and a twelve- 
foot beam, no Peoria could doubt that it would 
make its way safely down the Great River that 
ran through the land of their enemies. 

Many times did the Indians wonder in their 
hearts whether or not the French chief believed 
in the tales of terror that Nicanope had spoken. 
They saw him little at the village now, for he 
and his men had moved down to the new Fort 
Crevecoeur; but there was never a time when 
Indian figures, none too busy at home, did not 
peer through the bushes or sit boldly by, fascin- 
ated by the busy doings at the fort and primi- 
tive shipyard. 

Far to the south, meanwhile, a band of the 
young men were on their way home from the 
warpath. Many leagues ahead of them hurried 

74 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

one of the band, a young warrior sent on to tell 
the village of their approach. Over the plains 
and through tangled woods he plodded on weary- 
feet. He was less than three leagues from the 
village now, but he was tired and very hungry. 
As he trudged along, he came upon a figure 
somewhat strange to his eyes. But he had seen 
the traders who came now and then down the 
rivers from Canada and he knew this man for a 
Frenchman. He saw, what was more pleasing 
to his needs, that the stranger carried four wild 
turkeys. Far spent with hunger, he called to 
him and asked for food. 

The white man handed him one of the wild 
turkeys. With eager hands the Indian lighted a 
fire, swung over it a kettle which he carried with 
him and proceeded to cook the fowl. While the 
fire licked the sides of the kettle the strange 
white man asked him of his journey and in- 
quired about the Great River that ran through 
the countries of the South. The young warrior 
picked up from the fire a charred bit of wood 
and with it drew, on a piece of bark, a careful 
diagram which showed the course of the river 
and the streams that fell into it. Then he gave 
the names of these streams and told of the 

75 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

tribes that dwelt along them, and the white 
man wrote them down in his own language on 
the bark. 

Everywhere along the Mississippi the young 
Indian had traveled in a pirogue, and never was 
there a fall or rapids to obstruct his way. Not 
even were there sandbars, save near the mouth 
in the heat of summer-time. The two men 
talked of these things for some time, while the 
Indian rested and appeased his hunger. Finally 
the Frenchman gave to the red man a hatchet 
and asked him to say to no one that he had met 
him. With his lips thus sealed by the white 
man's gift and his stomach made glad by the 
white man's game, the young Indian turned 
aside and accompanied his new friend with 
some awe to the newly built fort, instead of 
passing on to the village. 

Early on the morning of the next day, in the 
village of the Peorias, a group of Indians were 
gathered in the lodge of one of the chiefs. 
They were feasting in great joy upon the meat 
of a bear — a delicacy much prized among 
them. Suddenly a form darkened the entrance 
to the lodge and La Salle strode in among the 
squatted Indians. He paused in their midst and 

76 



THE FORT CALLED CREVECCEUR 

looked about before he spoke. A smile of tri- 
umph was on his lips. 

"Perhaps you do not know," he said, "that 
the Maker of all things takes especial care of 
the French. In answer to my prayers he has 
revealed to me the truth concerning the Great 
River, which your frightful tales prevented me 
from learning." 

Then he went on to tell the astounded In- 
dians of all the windings of the Mississippi, of 
the smooth current upon which a canoe might 
ride to its mouth. He described each river that 
entered it from the east and from the west, and 
named each tribe that dwelt on its borders. 
Nowhere was there fall or rapids to obstruct 
one's way, and only where the river broadened 
out at the mouth were there shallows and sand 
and mud-bars. Each twist and turn, each rocky 
cliff and entering stream he seemed to know as 
if he had spent months in paddling up and 
down the river in an Indian pirogue. 

The bear meat was forgotten. The Indians 
sat silent, their hands clapped to their mouths 
in amazement. What great power or "medi- 
cine" did this man possess that enabled him to 
watch what occurred in secret nightly councils, 

77 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and to see and describe hundreds of leagues of 
the course and valley of the Great River he had 
never visited ? Like children caught in mischief, 
they confessed that all he said was true and 
that they had deceived him only to keep him in 
their midst. 

La Salle departed from the lodge, leaving 
them with troubled minds. How strange and 
wonderful were these men of fair faces and 
flowing hair. And what did their presence bode 
for the Indian ? Were they their friends, or were 
they at heart friends of the Iroquois .^^ Who 
knew how near to their villages were bands of 
painted warriors of the Five Nations? Yet, 
though suspicion lay heavy upon their hearts, 
they looked with covetous eyes upon the 
hatchets and knives, the kettles and weapons 
that the white men brought. 



IX 

THE WHITE INVASION 

Not a day passed but the Illinois followed 
with inquisitive eyes the movements of the men 
at the fort. They watched the great white 
beams by the river bank as the Frenchmen laid 
them out and fastened them together till the 
growing ship began to look like the white skele- 
ton of an immense buffalo lying bleached and 
bare to the four winds of heaven. 

Omawha, the friendly chief, adopted as a son 
the short young friar of La Salle's party; and so 
the gray robe of Father Membre passed freely 
in and out of the lodges of the village. Like one 
of the chief's family, he ate of the Indian fare 
and slept on buffalo robes beside smouldering 
lodge-fires. His fellow-whites were at the new 
fort; and he alone watched the coming of spring 
in the Indian town. 

As winter began to break up, the hunting 
parties came home. The war party from the 
South brought captives with them, and the vil- 
lage became more populous. But Chassagoac, 

79 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

the indefatigable hunter, was still oflF in the 
woods. 

Even in the long stretches of the Indian 
country, winterlocked and drear, news traveled 
fast; and the Illinois well knew that runners 
were carrying all up and down the Great Valley 
tales of the white men among the Peorias, of the 
fort on the hill, and of the ship that was to sail 
down the long river. It was, therefore, with 
concern that the Peorias saw one day a gather- 
ing of Indians encamped about the fort. They 
were Osages and Chickasaws and Arkansas — 
tribes that lived along the Mississippi far to the 
south. And the villagers knew that they — 
jealous of the advantages of the Illinois — 
would tell the white chief of the easy navigation 
of the river and urge him to come down and live 
in their country. 

Not many days passed before another group 
of Indians arrived, this time from the Far West 
— so far beyond the Mississippi River that they 
told of long-haired Spaniards who rode to war 
on horses and fought with lances. One of the 
Indians proudly wore at his belt a tobacco 
pouch made from the hoof of a horse with 
some of the skin of the leg attached. A week 

80 



THE WHITE INVASION 

later came still another delegation to see the 
far-famed whites. They were Sioux from the 
distant Northwest, in the land where the Miss- 
issippi took its rise; and they were long-time 
foes of the tribes of the Illinois. 

In the councils of the Illinois Indians there 
was much debate. Each chief had his own 
opinion. It was a time of new and strange hap- 
penings. Long had the Illinois tribe lived proud 
and comfortable in the valley. They had 
hunted and fished up and down the rivers at 
their will. In the open spaces before their ar- 
bor-like lodges they gambled and smoked and 
basked in the summer days, the bright sun 
warming their naked bodies. And when they 
were tired of basking, they put on their gar- 
ments of red and black paint, gathered howling 
in the war dance, and set out on a raid against 
the Sacs and Foxes west of the Lake of the 
Illinois, or the Sioux by the head-waters of 
the Mississippi, or the Osages and Arkansas 
and other tribes on its southern banks. Often, 
too, war came to them, and sometimes so des- 
perate that even the Indian women fought 
hand to hand with the enemy in the spaces 
between the lodges of the village. 

8i 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

But of late years had come new dangers. 
Faint whisperings reached them of white-faced 
men who brought from across the sea weapons 
that roared Hke the thunder and smote their 
victims like bolts of lightning. Their ancient 
enemies, the Iroquois, bought these weapons 
with furs and carried their ravages upon the 
Western tribes with increased deadliness. Then 
they learned that the white men themselves 
were beginning to appear on the Great Lakes — 
first at the eastern end, but finally on the shores 
of Lake Superior and the Lake of the Illinois. 

By and by there pushed out from the Lakes 
into the valleys of the Wisconsin and the 
Illinois, and even as far as the Upper Missis- 
sippi, the black-robed priest and the lone fur 
trader. Restless coureurs de hois floated down 
the rivers in greater numbers. They set up 
cabins and wintered in the lands which once the 
Indians alone knew. Priests, having come to 
visit, came again to stay. Soldiers and explorers 
pierced the far wilderness. Strange canoes shot 
up and down the waters. The ringing of axes 
sounded in the woods, and forts sprang up. 
These new bold habitants brought hatchets 
that put the old stone clubs to shame, kettles 

82 



THE WHITE INVASION 

such as the Indians had never dreamed of, 
knives with a deadly edge, blankets of bright 
color and fine texture — and the childlike heart 
of the Indian was made glad. 

A new force had come upon the land and the 
end of the old days was at hand. No Indian 
fully realized it. The novelty of the white 
man's ways and the charm of his gifts shortened 
their vision, and so they lived each in the event- 
ful present. But as surely as the river flowed 
down to the sea, the Great Valley was passing 
out of their grasp. The wide reaches of meadow, 
the leagues of hill and plain, the waters that ran 
past a thousand hills, virgin forest for their 
game, live soil for their corn, all the freedom 
and bounty of the greatest valley in the world 
had been theirs — a valley to roam over at will, 
to hunt in with the changing seasons, to fight 
for in the glory of battle among themselves. 

The red men did not know that things were 
really going to be different, for they were not 
wise in prophecy. But they were restless in 
mind and they felt some of the dangers of the 
present; for like children they feared a power 
they could not understand. 

Among the Illinois tribes this vague fear rose 

83 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and then died out in the more placid courses of 
their lives. Then lurking suspicion seized upon 
some event and all was alarm again. So it was 
with other tribes, for fierce courage and abject 
terror alternated in the Indian mind. 

Over on the shores of the Fox River and 
about the foot of the Lake of the Illinois lived 
the nation of Miamis. They were relatives of 
the Illinois tribes as well as neighbors, and their 
language was much the same. The fear of the 
Iroquois, armed with white men's weapons, had 
seized such firm hold upon them that once they 
migrated to the Mississippi. But in a time of 
peace they had wandered back to their former 
homes. Now and then trouble arose between 
Miami and Illinois, and for years they waged 
war upon each other. 

The secret embassy of Monso with his 
Miami followers left the Illinois uneasy. How 
did the Miamis know so much about the Iro- 
quois.'^ If the Iroquois came, would the 
Miamis join them against the people of the 
Illinois ? And what would La Salle and Tonty 
and the men at the fort do.^^ Round and round 
went question and answer as the spring came 
on. Soon would Chassagoac, their greatest 

84 



THE WHITE INVASION 

chief, be back with his hunters. Perhaps his 
wisdom might help them. 

In the meantime they went about their du- 
ties and pleasures in the village. The end of 
February, 1680, came, and on the last day of 
the month they saw a great stirring — an un- 
usual bustling about and strutting up and down 
on the part of the gray-robed Hennepin. Finally 
he planted his figure solidly in a canoe laden 
with skins and weapons and knives and kettles. 
The veteran woodsman, Michael Ako, was with 
him^ and Antoine Auguel — called the Picard 
by his comrades because he came from Picardy 
in France. Bidding good-bye to those on the 
bank, the three men slipped swiftly down the 
current' and out of sight. What new move was 
this.? 

The Indians wondered until the next day 
when the village welcomed the return of one of 
its hunting parties, just arrived from down the 
river. They had passed Ako and his fellows 
about sundown the night before and tried to 
persuade them to return. But no, they were 
bound for the land of the Sioux, where Ako 
meant to trade in furs and learn of the country; 
and the affable friar pronounced himself bound 

8s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

to undertake the great perils of an unknown 
land to preach to the Indians of the Upper 
Mississippi. So the red hunters let them pass 
— the boastful friar and his two companions. 
Little did the three know what experiences 
were to befall them before they saw again the 
lights of white men's cabins. 

On the day that the hunters returned, those 
who watched the fort saw two other canoes set 
out, this time going up the river. Here was a 
still more important event, for in one of the 
boats was the figure of La Salle himself. Six 
Frenchmen were with him, and also a Mohe- 
gan warrior whom they called the Wolf, from 
the name of his people. The Indians waited 
in wonderment. Was the fort being deserted? 
Not yet, for the mysterious Tonty, his arm 
swinging heavily at his side, passed about 
among the men at the fort giving orders in the 
absence of his chief. 



X 

THE MYSTERIOUS HAND 

The Indians of the Peoria village were inter- 
ested spectators of the events which were being 
acted out by the band of Frenchmen. Father 
Membre lived in their town and they gave him 
respectful attention. Among themselves they 
talked much of his white friends within the 
stockaded walls of the fort. There were 
scarcely a dozen men with Tonty now, and 
upon them the Indians looked with a mixture 
of curiosity, contempt, and awe. Among them 
there were ship carpenters and soldiers, on some 
of whose faces rascality and cowardice were 
written. Had the Peorias not seen them ner- 
vous with fear while Nicanope told them of the 
imaginary terrors of the river, and at a public 
council, too, — what could more clearly stamp 
the coward.^ 

The old friar Ribourde shuffled about in his 
gray gown and bare sandaled feet, saying mass 
among the Frenchmen as Membre did among 
the Peorias. The strong-armed man, Le Meil- 

87 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

leur, whom his comrade called La Forge, swung 
the hammer on the red-hot iron and mended the 
tools of the French at the precious forge. Down 
by the river, Moyse Hillaret and La Roze and 
the other shipbuilders and carpenters laid out 
and joined together the ribs of the huge wooden 
skeleton. Among these brawny men was a 
muscular young lad from Paris named Renault, 
L'Esperance, a brave-hearted young servant of 
La Salle, and Boisrondet, a man of higher birth 
than the rest and a special friend of Tonty. 
But it was not of these men that the Peorias 
talked most to the bands of hunters and war- 
riors returning now to the village — it was of 
La Salle, the white chief, who had left the 
fort, and of Tonty, the man of mystery, who 
remained in charge of the garrison. 

The Indians could not understand the curi- 
ous commander of the fort. Why was his skin 
darker than that of his comrades and his hair 
so black — like the hair of their own Indian 
women, though not so straight .^^ But most of all 
they wondered at the queer way in which he 
used his right hand. They told the newly 
arrived Indians of the day the white men came 
to the village. At the feast of welcome Tonty 

88 



THE MYSTERIOUS HAND 

had used his left hand always as he ate 
of their sagamite and meat, and now they 
watched him as he passed here and there among 
his men. If he pulled a canoe up on shore or 
grasped a piece of timber down at the shipyard 
it was never with his right hand. Yet they had 
seen him deal blows with that mysterious right 
hand which had the effect of an Indian war 
club. With what strange "medicine" his pow- 
erful arm was gifted they could not tell; and it 
was partly for that reason that they feared him. 
Often, in the adventurous years that followed, 
red-skinned warriors in many parts of the Great 
Valley were startled and awed by the ease with 
which this man could by one heavy swing of his 
right hand break the teeth or crack the skull of 
an unruly Indian. 

If the Peorias could have looked off into lands 
they had never seen and read the events of other 
times and places, as it now seemed to them that 
La Salle could do, they might have found the 
explanation of the mystery. Not many years 
before the white men came to the Peoria vil- 
lage, the little island of Sicily, in the far-away 
Mediterranean Sea, was in the throes of a bitter 
war. Along its coast grim-mouthed ships of war 

89 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and galleys, propelled by the oars of convicts 
and captives, bore the flags of three nations — 
France, Holland, and Spain. 

In one of the battles the figure of Henry 
de Tonty might have been seen fighting under 
the flag of France. For many years he had so 
fought — four campaigns on ships of war and 
three on galleys — and had gained high rank 
in the service. But he was not of French birth. 
His father had come to Paris as an exile from 
Naples in the sunny land of Italy after taking 
a prominent part in the Neapolitan Revolt of 
1647. Sicily like Naples had long been under 
the hated rule of Spain, and now the Sicilians 
rising in revolt had called upon the French for 
help. The Spaniards, hard pressed, called a 
Dutch fleet in to aid them. So the war was 
waged, now on sea, now on land; and Tonty, in 
the thick of the battle, rejoiced in a struggle 
to free men of -^ his father's country from the 
Spanish yoke. 

The cannon flashed and roared. Men fell all 
about him. A hand grenade, thrown by the 
enemy, burst near by into a thousand pieces 
and tore away the right hand of Henry de 
Tonty. He was captured by the enemy and 

90 



THE MYSTERIOUS HAND 

held prisoner for six months. Then he was 
released in exchange for the governor's son. In 
place of his lost member he substituted a hand 
of metal which he wore encased in a glove. But 
now peace had settled upon the Mediterranean, 
and the restless Tonty joined La Salle and came 
across the sea to where the land was young and 
adventure lay in every river valley. 

In time the Indians learned the story of his 
"medicine" arm; and throughout the Great 
Valley, from the Lakes to the mouth of the 
Mississippi, Tonty came to be known to the 
tribes as the "Man with the Iron Hand." 



XI 



"we are all savages" 

The winter was a long one in the valley of the 
Illinois. Food was scarce and the little band at 
Fort Crevecoeur had many hungry days. Once 
there passed the Peoria village a canoe headed 
downstream, and in it the Indians recognized 
two of the men who had set out with La Salle. 
The canoe was loaded to the gunwale with pro- 
visions. Where could the white chief have found 
such a store? The answer came later from the 
lips of Chassagoac himself when he returned 
from his winter hunt. 

Trailing through the woods one day Chassa- 
goac had seen the smoke of a camp-fire. Draw- 
ing near with two of his men he met a strange 
white man who presented him with a red blan- 
ket, a kettle, and some hatchets and knives. 
Chassagoac soon learned that the stranger was 
La Salle, the chief of the company of white men 
who had settled near the Peoria village. The 
white man knew the fame of Chassagoac, and 
the two chiefs sat down for a long conference, 

92 



"WE ARE ALL SAVAGES" 

during which La Salle told of all the things that 
had happened at the village and explained to the 
red chief that his men at the fort were in sad 
need of food. If the red brother would furnish 
them with provisions he would repay him on his 
return from the East. 

Then, as the kindly Chassagoac promised his 
help, the white chief went on to tell of his plans. 
He told of the fort and the great ship that was 
being built on the riverside. Even now he was 
on his way to the East to make peace with the 
Iroquois for the Illinois, and he would come 
back with arms for their defense and with mer- 
chandise to distribute among them; and many 
more Frenchmen would return with him to es- 
tablish themselves at the Illinois villages. He 
told of his plans for a great expedition down 
the river to its mouth, whence he could set up 
more easy trade and bring from across the sea 
goods of all kinds for the tribes of the Illinois. 

Chassagoac was deeply interested, and with 
generous hand he filled a canoe with stores from 
the caches of the deserted Kaskaskia village near 
at hand. He urged the white man to return 
soon, and assured him that what had been said 
about the beauty and the easy passage of the 

93 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Mississippi was all true. Then after courteous 
leave-taking the two chiefs separated. La Salle 
continued his way up the river, while two of his 
men paddled the canoe full of supplies down the 
stream to Fort Crevecoeur. After parting from 
La Salle, Chassagoac went on with his hunting 
until the day when he came once more to the 
village of his people. Here his arrival was wel- 
comed by the Indians, whose fears were perhaps 
somewhat quieted by his stanch belief in the 
white men. He spent much time with the gray- 
robed friars and talked with them of how he 
had met the black-gowned Marquette on the 
distant shores of the Lake of the Illinois and had 
given him part of the deer he had killed. In- 
deed, Chassagoac thought so well of the teach- 
ings of the friars that he agreed to follow their 
strange manitou, and so was baptized after the 
manner of the Frenchmen. 

Meanwhile two more Frenchmen slipped 
down the river past the village to the fort, 
which they reached about the middle of April. 
At once there was much stirring among the 
whites, and soon Tonty with a few of his men 
passed up the river toward the village of the 
Kaskaskias. The Indians were curious at this 

94 



"WE ARE ALL SAVAGES" 

new move. Some time before the veteran Ako, 
together with the Picard and the friar Henne- 
pin, had set off down the stream, and La Salle 
with more men had gone up the river the day 
after. Now even Tonty was departing. 

The Indians watched closely the handful of 
men who remained in the stockaded walls. 
Noel Le Blanc and Nicolas Laurent, the two 
men who had lately arrived at the fort, had 
come with orders from La Salle to Tonty to 
build another fort at the upper village. In 
Tonty's absence, Le Blanc seemed to be mov- 
ing about like a restless spirit, talking earnestly 
among the men. With the blacksmith and the 
ship carpenters in particular he appeared to be 
plotting some deep-laid scheme. 

Into the village of the Peorias, likewise, crept 
strange whisperings and rumors. Men from 
other villages came to tell them that their dis- 
trusted neighbors, the Miamis, had been seek- 
ing an alliance with the hated Iroquois. Was 
the fort to be abandoned, and were the French- 
men to creep off by twos and threes leaving the 
Peorias to be eaten by the Iroquois i 

Presently those who watched the fort saw 
another party start out. This time there were 

95 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

five men in the canoe — Father Ribourde, 
Boisrondet, L'Esperance, and two others, 
Petit-Bled and Boisdardenne. After their de- 
parture a strange commotion arose within the 
walls of the fort. Ship carpenters ran here and 
there plundering the cabins : they tore down the 
doors, and pillaged and robbed on every hand. 
They even overturned the effects in the lodg- 
ings of the priests. Hillaret and the brawny 
blacksmith forced open the storehouse and 
brought out powder and balls and arms, and 
furs and merchandise. From every corner of 
the fortress La Roze and Le Blanc and their 
fellow-conspirators gathered things of value. 
Then, loaded down with guns and beaver skins 
and fine linen and moccasins, they made for the 
riverside. One man with a sharp instrument 
scratched on the gleaming white timbers of the 
half-built ship the words, "Nous sommes tous 
Sauvages " — " We are all savages " — and the 

date :" Ce 15 A 1680." Then off into the 

woods they vanished, leaving the fort wrecked 
and plundered. 

Meantime night had come upon the aged 
friar and his four companions on their way to 
Tonty at the upper village. Petit-Bled and 

96 



"WE ARE ALL SAVAGES" 

Boisdardenne, in league with the conspirators 
at the fort, rose up and spiked the guns of 
L'Esperance and Boisrondet, and made off 
with the canoe after their fellows, leaving the 
Recollet and the two young men to find their 
way on foot and without means of defense to 
the village of the Kaskaskias. 

Tonty heard the news of the mutiny with 
consternation and anger, and hastened back to 
the ruined fort. Everything of value seemed 
to have been taken, except the forge and some 
tools and arms too heavy for the deserters to 
carry on their flight. With this freight the 
heavy-hearted Tonty made his way back to the 
Kaskaskia village, where the lodges were once 
more filled by the returning warriors and 
hunters. After sending, by two routes, messen- 
gers to tell La Salle of the catastrophe, Tonty 
prepared for a new order of life. The fort 
and its garrison no longer gave him protection; 
but the Man with the Iron Hand was no 
coward. With his fragment of a band he en- 
tered the village and asked the Kaskaskias if he 
might live in their midst. They welcomed him 
to their kettles and their cabins, and shared 
with him and his men their food and their 

97 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

buffalo robes. The band of thirty or more that 
had come into the valley a few months before 
was now reduced to six — Tonty and his friend 
Boisrondet, the two young men, L'Esperance 
and Renault the Parisian, and the two friars — 
Father Membre having come up from the lower 
village. 



XII 

THE DEATH OF CHASSAGOAC 

The summer of 1680 was an unquiet season, 
when every whisper of the wind seemed to bring 
ill news. Persistent rumors came to the Illinois 
of an alliance between the Iroquois and the 
Miamis. Seeing their fears the energetic man 
with the "medicine" arm began to teach his 
red brothers the arts of the white man: he 
showed them the use of guns and taught them 
how to fight as the white men fought. 

One day a runner came into the village with 
news of the death of La Salle, followed a little 
later by another Indian who confirmed the evil 
tidings. The Illinois saw gloom in the face of 
Tonty; but his eyes flashed no less of fire and 
his step lacked none of its usual vigor, for he 
was every inch a chief. Then into the village a 
new rumor came whispering to the Indians that 
this dark-visaged chieftain with flowing hair 
was no Frenchman at all ; that he came from a 
country far beyond France whose people bore 

99 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

no kinship or allegiance to the great King of 
the French. 

Surely the situation looked worse for the Illi- 
nois with each passing day. If the white men 
were in league with the Iroquois, and if their 
kinsmen, the Miamis, had joined the enemy, 
they and their wives and children might well 
fear the time when the war cry of the painted 
Iroquois would echo in the valley of the Illinois. 
Defeated and overwhelmed, they would be 
eaten by their enemies. Did not the tribes of 
the Five Nations thus treat their captives .f* 
Consternation rose on the wings of fear. What 
hope had the Illinois against the tribes from the 
East? 

From their long houses at the other end of 
the Great Lakes the famous Iroquois warriors 
had spread desolation among a hundred tribes. 
They had conquered and subjugated whole 
nations. Toward the south as far as the Chero- 
kees and Catawbas they had made easy con- 
quests. North of the Iroquois were the French 
on the St. Lawrence. Since Champlain had 
taken sides with the Canadian Indians against 
the Iroquois, three quarters of a century ago, 
the tribes of the Five Nations had hated the 

ICO 



THE DEATH OF CHASSAGOAC 

French. But they did not dare attack them. 
So now the West offered the best field for 
their eager ravages. From the Dutch in New 
Netherland, and later from their English suc- 
cessors, they had purchased guns and ammuni- 
tion, and they had set their cruel hearts upon 
laying waste the valley of the Illinois — at least 
so the tribes of the West had heard and be- 
lieved. 

The Illinois had fought off the Iroquois 
before. Could they do it again .^ Their own 
warriors were experts with bows and arrows, 
and some of them had guns now; but the Iro- 
quois warriors had every man his gun, and also 
his shield to ward off the feeble arrows of West- 
ern tribes. By their attacks other tribes had 
been almost exterminated, and their captives 
burned by slow fires with inconceivable tor- 
tures. What better chance had the Illinois, 
particularly if the treacherous Miamis joined 
the foe and the white men also proved to be 
enemies? So they watched Tonty narrowly; 
but the dark-eyed chief, with his forge and his 
tools, his restless stride, and his proud bearing, 
lived among them, and heeded not their anxious 
or suspicious looks. 

lOI 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

The year seemed truly a calamitous one for 
the Indians. It was in those trying days that 
some Illinois were gathered in one of the long- 
roofed lodges, where on a bed made soft by 
the skins of buffalo lay a man close unto 
death. About him stood the men upon whom 
the nation relied to heal the sick and cure the 
wounded, to drive away the evil spirits, and 
to conjure the good spirits — the mysterious 
medicine men. They had worked long with the 
man who lay upon the bed, for he was a chief 
great in the councils of the Illinois nation. 

A skillful hunter, a brave warrior, the great- 
est chief of the Illinois, Chassagoac lay dying. 
Five years ago he had known Father Mar- 
quette, and now just a little while ago he had 
been baptized by one of the gray-robed friars 
who belonged to the band of his friend La Salle. 
But as his death came on, it was to his own 
people that he turned. The manitou of the 
French was so far away, while the medicine 
men of his tribe were so near. So they gathered 
about him with their dances and their incan- 
tations; they made passes over his body and 
muttered strange words; they lifted their eyes 
and their voices toward the four winds of the 

I02 



THE DEATH OF CHASSAGOAC 

heavens; and they waved rattles in a vain effort 
to appease the spirit that sought to rob them 
of their chief. It was useless. Chassagoac had 
looked about him for the last time. For a 
moment it was quiet in the lodge. Then a long 
despairing wail rent the air; and outside among 
the lodges every man and woman and child 
knew that the spirit of the great Chassagoac 
had gone out of him forever. 



XIII 

THE IROQUOIS COME 

The level stretch of land along the north 
bank of the Illinois River, where lay the lodges 
of the Kaskaskias, swarmed with hundreds of 
Indian braves who were eager to be off into 
the woods and across the plains. What was so 
stupid as life among the lodges with the women 
and old men when the far-off wilds called them, 
when streams might carry their pirogues into 
lands where their enemies lay sleeping and 
unwatchful, when the trails to north and south 
and east and west might lead them into woods 
and fields where bountiful game would fall 
before their arrows? Why should the white 
chief make so serious objection? Other bands 
had set off some days before in spite of his 
protests. 

No one had seen signs of the Iroquois, and 
the alarm raised so often began to lose its ter- 
ror. Besides, was Tonty such a good prophet 
after all ? He had told them that La Salle would 
return by the end of May, and now May had 

104 



THE IROQUOIS COME 

long been gone and sure tidings had come that 
La Salle was dead. 

It was not yet fall. Across the river the leaves 
of the trees, still fresh and green, were turning 
and rippling in the winds. Even the sound of 
their whispering said to the Indians: "Soon we 
will be dropping off and the frosts will come. 
Hunting is good. Come away into the woods." 
And they went. 

September found not half the warriors left in 
the village; but Tonty and his three young men 
were still there. The two gray-robed Recollets 
— one short and sturdy and young, and the 
other who had seen the seasons change as often 
as the old men in the village — withdrew to a 
cabin in the midst of a field some distance from 
the town. La Salle had not come back; nor had 
the round-faced priest, who strutted so pom- 
pously down to the water's edge in February 
and paddled off with Ako and the Picard toward 
the sunset. 

The Indians hoped Tonty would continue to 
stay with them. More than four months he had 
lived in their midst, and now it was twice that 
time since he had first come into their valley. 
He dealt with them honestly and without fear, 

IDS 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and he had taught them many new ways. The 
Illinois were archers whose fame had spread 
throughout the length and breadth of the val- 
ley of the Mississippi; but Tonty had shown 
them how to use the guns that spat fire and 
dropped a foe while the bow was bending — the 
guns that made the Iroquois so dreaded. 

In spite of privation and discouragement, 
desertions and loss of friends, Tonty gave no 
sign that he had lost heart. If only the Indians 
could hear again the reassuring words of the 
lamented Chassagoac and forget the warnings 
of his still suspicious brother, Nicanope, they 
could learn to trust the French and to love this 
white leader like a brother. 

Once Tonty had set off in a canoe to see if he 
could learn at the settlement at Mackinac some 
news of his chief who all people said was dead. 
The Indians protested against his departure, 
but in vain. He did not go far, however, for the 
river was at that time so low that he ran upon 
shoals and was obliged to return to the village. 

Toward the middle of September came the 
hoped-for rains, and one day Tonty and his men 
drew their canoe out of the water, turned it up- 
side down, and began to renew its coat of gum 

io6 



THE IROQUOIS COME 

ready for another trial of the river. Some of the 
Indians watched him as he worked with his 
curious left-handed movements. Others were 
too busy entertaining a friendly Shawnee who 
was paying a visit to the village. As night came 
on, the Shawnee departed, making his way 
toward the south and west. The rounded roofs 
of the village caught the arrows shot by the 
setting sun and then sank into dusk. Under 
each roof Indian men stretched out upon buf- 
falo hides and lost themselves in dreams. The 
women arranged the lodges for the night and 
then lay down beside brown little papooses 
whose round eyes had long been closed. So the 
quiet night settled down upon the village. 
Three times would the oaks along the river sow 
their leaves to the winds of winter before an- 
other such peaceful night would come upon the 
village and its people. 

The next day Indians of the village saw the 
Shawnee come hurrying back, cross the river, 
and rush hot-foot into the town. "The Iro- 
quois!" he panted to the excited chiefs. Two 
leagues off to the southwest, on the banks of the 
Aramoni, a tributary of the Illinois River, he 
had discovered an army of five or six hundred 

107 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Iroquois coming to attack the village. Turmoil 
fell upon the Kaskaskias. Where were their 
warriors? More than half of them were scat- 
tered to the four quarters of the valley. Only- 
four or five hundred remained. And where 
were the guns which Tonty had so carefully 
trained them to use? Gone for the most part 
with the absent warriors. Only a few were left, 
with ammunition for three or four shots apiece. 
The rest of the braves had only bows and 
arrows and war clubs. Tonty had been right, 
but it was no time now to lament. 

A reconnoitring party sent out to spy upon 
the enemy soon came back in great excitement. 
About five hundred Iroquois were encamped 
along the Aramoni. They had guns and pistols 
and sabers. Most of them had shields of wood 
or of leather, and some wore wooden breast- 
plates. And with the Iroquois were a hundred 
Miamis, armed with bows and arrows. The 
anger of the Illinois rose with their fear. The 
Miamis, their neighbors and kin, should smart 
for this afterward. But the spying party had 
still further news to tell. Among the moving 
figures of the enemy they had seen one arrayed 
in a black robe and a Jesuit's cowl. Calmer eyes 

io8 



THE IROQUOIS COME 

would have seen that it was only an Iroquois 
chief decked out in a black coat and hat. But 
the heated imagination of the scouts saw a 
French priest; while in another figure they 
made sure they saw La Salle himself. 

If the village had been in a turmoil before, 
now it was in a fury. Their worst fears, then, 
had come true: the French were all traitors. 
Even Tonty had deceived them and had his 
own reasons for trying to get out of the village 
before the Iroquois came. Like angry bees the 
Indians swarmed to the lodge of Tonty. 
"Now," said one of their chiefs, "we know you 
for a friend of the Iroquois. The winds of 
rumor have told us no lies. We are lost, for the 
enemy are too many for us and you and the 
Frenchmen are their friends." 

In the midst of the furious, gesticulating 
crowd of warriors Tonty stood calm. "I will 
show you that I am not a friend of the Iro- 
quois," he replied. "If need be, I will die with 
you. I and my men will help you fight your 
battle." 

Their anger turned to joy as they thought 
that with such a leader the good spirits might 
yet give them victory. There was much to 

109 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

do before the battle. With swift hands they 
gathered together a supply of corn; and when 
night came ghostly figures moved to and fro as 
they embarked the women and children in their 
long pirogues. Each wooden canoe would hold 
thirty or more, and there were hundreds to 
crowd the little fleet. With a guard of fifty or 
sixty men the boats slipped out, one after an- 
other, upon the dark waters. Noiseless paddles 
dipped in and out as the barks, filled with provi- 
sions and the closely huddled figures, shot down 
the stream. They passed the black mouth of 
the Aramoni, and after several hours came to a 
spot six leagues below the village. Here, in a 
place made almost inaccessible by the river on 
one side and a swamp on the other, they landed 
and set up camp. 

In the Kaskaskia village there was no rest 
that night. The young braves were preparing 
for the battle of the morrow. By long rows 
of camp-fires, kettles were hung. Dogs were 
killed and cooked, for the occasion was one de- 
serving of so great a ceremony. By turns they 
feasted and danced in the flickering light of the 
fires — weird dances, punctuated with howls 
and whoops. The flames of the camp-fires cast 

no 



THE IROQUOIS COME 

the shadows of the dancers across the open space 
and against the walls of the lodges like ghostly, 
ever-changing spirits; and into the night air 
rose chants, rhythmic and uncanny. All the 
long night through the Indians kept up their 
rites to work themselves into a proper spirit for 
the attack upon the Iroquois — a fight against 
odds wherein they needed the help of every 
manitou or spirit that could aid them. 

Gradually the fires die out as in the east a 
faint light begins to spread. The day has come 
at last, the day which for years the Illinois have 
dreaded. They gather with fresh war paint 
and ready weapons — bows and arrows, heavy- 
headed clubs, or skull-crackers, and the few 
guns that are left. Tonty is there with two of 
his men. L'Esperance is to remain in the village 
to guard the papers of La Salle; and the two 
friars, ignorant of the excitement, are a league 
away in their retreat in the fields. 

Together the warriors crowd to the river 
bank, Tonty and Boisrondet and Renault in the 
lead, with the naked and painted Indians howl- 
ing and whooping about them. Their pirogues 
cross the stream in a trice. Through the strip 
of oaks, over the hill and out across the open 

III 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

meadow, the warriors, white and red, dash on to 
the conflict. They approach the ranks of the 
Iroquois, but halt in an open field in sight of 
the enemy. 

Tonty will make a last effort at peace and is 
given a wampum necklace as a truce offering. 
Handing his gun to a friend, he walks across 
the intervening space attended by a single 
Illinois. The Indians watch him closely as he 
nears the foe. There is a sharp, deadly volley 
from the Iroquois. Tonty stops, and sending 
back the Indian who is with him, goes on alone. 
Arrow and ball fly about him, but he reaches 
the lines unscathed. Iroquois warriors swallow 
him from the view of the anxious Illinois. Only 
the Indian who has crossed half the open space 
with him sees the knife of an Iroquois flash out 
and bury itself in the side of the white chief. 
Then the staggering figure is lost even to his 
view. A moment later his hat is raised upon 
the end of a gun high above the heads of the foe. 

With a cry of rage the whole force of the 
Illinois breaks again into a charge, furious to 
avenge such treachery. The young Boisrondet 
and Renault are in the lead, their hair flowing 
back in their speed, their set faces full of the 

112 



THE IROQUOIS COME 

lust of battle and revenge. The twisting, howl- 
ing figures of five hundred Indians hurl them- 
selves upon the ranks'^'of the enemy. Then like 
fiends they fight. The report of the Iroquois 
guns is like the cracking of twigs in the forest to 
the new-found courage of the Illinois. Their 
war cries rise above it sharp and shrill. Swift 
arrows fly like driving hail. Heavy war clubs 
crash on Iroquois shield or on painted head and 
body. Even the vaunted Iroquois cannot hold 
against them. Their left side weakens, then 
yields, and gives back for half a league across 
the meadow. 

Then goes up the sudden cry that Tonty is 
alive. Out of the press of battling foes he comes 
motioning them to hold. Gradually the din and 
the tumult cease. The Illinois withdraw and 
count their losses. Tonty reaches them, weak 
with the loss of blood from a gaping wound in 
his side, but he carries in his hand a wampum 
peace offering from the Iroquois. 



XIV 

THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

Throughout the fight Tonty's life hung 
upon a thread. An impetuous Onondaga had 
stabbed him in the side, but fortunately the 
knife had glanced from a rib. Another Indian 
seized him by the hair; and a third raised his hat 
upon a gun. Then one of the chiefs recognized 
him as a white man and intervened. He was 
carried into the midst of the camp, where the 
chiefs gathered about him and heard his plea 
for peace. The Illinois, said Tonty, were just 
as much the friends of the governor of Canada 
as were the Iroquois. Why should the Iroquois 
make war upon them.^ 

It was an unquiet parley. Behind Tonty stood 
an Indian warrior with ready knife; and now 
and then as they talked he wound his fingers 
in the white man's hair and raised his black 
locks as if to scalp him. Outside of the circle the 
fight went on. Then came the report that Iro- 
quois men were killed and wounded and that 

114 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

the left side was yielding. Dismayed, the chiefs 
asked their white captive how many men were 
in the fight. Tonty, seeing a chance to prevent 
hostiHties, replied that there were twelve hun- 
dred Illinois and that fifty Frenchmen were 
fighting with them. Overcome with consterna- 
tion at these figures, the chiefs hastened to give 
Tonty the present of wampum and beg him to 
make peace for the Iroquois. 

The Illinois with their wounded white leader 
and his two men turned back to the village. A 
league from home they came upon Father 
Membre hurrying out to meet them. The 
sound of guns had brought him from his cabin 
in the fields back of the town. They crossed the 
river together, and Tonty was glad enough to 
lie down in one of the lodges and let the priest 
and young men tend his wound. 

Scarcely had the Illinois reached their lodges 
when, looking back, they saw little groups of 
Iroquois on the other side of the river. A few of 
these soon found means of crossing, and they 
hovered near the village in a pretense of seeking 
food. But the Illinois, who were not children in 
the art of Indian warfare, were well aware of 
the ways of the treacherous Iroquois, and they 

"5 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

watched these straggling bands with gloomy- 
foreboding. 

By a magnificent sally the Illinois had 
daunted their enemy, and Tonty's exaggeration 
of their numbers had completed the impression 
of their power in the minds of the Iroquois. 
But the Illinois well knew that they were no 
match for the Iroquois with their abundance 
of arms and ammunition and their allies, the 
Miamis. Sooner or later the Iroquois would 
learn the true numbers of the villagers. Then 
the fierce warriors of the Five Nations would 
harry them until they found an opportunity to 
crush them out of existence. Massacres, tor- 
tures, and burnings could be their only possible 
end if they stayed in the village. After their 
warriors were slain, what of the women and 
children, anxiously waiting in the secluded 
refuge down the river? 

Tonty and his men were probably safe, for 
the Iroquois had too much fear of the French in 
Canada to harm them without great provoca- 
tion. But the Illinois were not safe. So they 
deserted their village, took to their pirogues, 
and passed downstream to join their wives and 
old men. 

ii6 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

In their hearts the Indians saw the wisdom of 
flight, for they knew what had happened in the 
past. They did not forget the fate of other na- 
tions whom the Iroquois had practically exter- 
minated. Would the invasion of the Illinois 
country have any other end.? Yet it was with 
heavy and reluctant hearts that they gave up 
their lodges to the hated foe; and bands of war- 
riors trailed back up the river for another look 
at their one-time home. Appearing on the hills 
a short distance behind the village they gazed 
down upon the ruined lodges which had been 
fired by the Iroquois, who had piled timber and 
half-burned posts in the form of a rude fort. 
In a lodge some distance away Tonty had been 
left still suffering from his wound and attended 
by his five men. 

More and more of the Illinois gathered on the 
hill, until the array of warriors alarmed the 
Iroquois, who still nursed the belief that twelve 
hundred Illinois were haunting their rear. The 
Illinois continued their watch day by day and 
presently saw two men leave the town and 
climb the hill toward them. They soon dis- 
tinguished the peculiar swing of their friend 
Tonty. With him was an Iroquois Indian. Joy- 

117 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

fully they welcomed him and listened to his 
message. The Iroquois wished to make a 
treaty of peace and had sent one of their men as 
a hostage. 

The Illinois in turn sent back with Tonty one 
of their own young men, and negotiations were 
soon begun. But the peacemaker had been 
badly chosen, for the young Indian, eager for a 
treaty of peace, promised everything and finally 
revealed to the Iroquois the true number of the 
Illinois warriors. The Iroquois said little to the 
Illinois messenger, but sent him back to his 
people that night to tell the chiefs to come next 
day within half a league of the fort and conclude 
the peace. Then they turned on Tonty with 
wrath and reproaches for having deceived 
them. 

The next day at noon Illinois and Iroquois 
met not far from the village. The Iroquois, hid- 
ing their true plans, gave presents to their late 
opponents and bound themselves to a firm and 
lasting peace. But Tonty, who was not misled, 
managed to send Father Membre to the Illinois 
to tell them that the peace was only a pretense, 
that the Iroquois were making elm-bark canoes, 
and that if the Illinois did not flee at once 

Ii8 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

they would be followed and their whole tribe 
massacred. 

At night the Iroquois called Tonty and 
Father Membre into the rude fort, and having 
seated the white leader they laid before him 
presents consisting of six bundles of valuable 
beaver skins. By the first two presents the Iro- 
quois meant to inform Governor Frontenac 
that they would not eat his children and that he 
should not be angry at what they had done. 
The third bundle of skins was to be a plaster for 
the white man's wound. The fourth repre- 
sented oil to be rubbed on the white men's 
limbs because of the long journeys they had 
taken. With the fifth they told Tonty how 
bright the sun was ; and with the sixth they said 
that he should profit by it and return the next 
day to the French settlements. 

"When are you going to leave the Illinois 
country?" asked the dauntless white man. 

"Not until we have eaten these Illinois," 
replied the angered chiefs. 

With a quick motion of his foot Tonty 
kicked the beaver skins from him — an unpar- 
donable offense among Indians. Angry looks 
and gesticulations from the Indians greeted 

119 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

this act, but they hesitated to lay hands upon 
Tonty for he was a friend of Frontenac, the 
powerful governor of New France. Perhaps, 
too, they realized, better even than did the 
Illinois, the power of his heavy right hand, for 
he had lived in the land of the Iroquois before 
he had come out into these Western wilds. 

Scarcely restraining themselves, they drove 
the two men from the fort. Tonty and the friar 
returned to their comrades at their lodge. No 
longer was their presence in the Iroquois camp 
useful to the Illinois or safe for themselves. 
Hardly expecting to see the dawn, they passed 
the night on guard resolved to sell their lives as 
dearly as possible. But they were not molested, 
and when day came they embarked for the far- 
off settlements. They were the last white men 
to leave the valley of the Illinois where carnage 
and woe were to reign. 

The journey of Tonty and his companions 
was a difficult one, and calamity met them early 
on the way. After some five hours' paddling, 
they stopped to mend their canoe. The old friar 
Ribourde went off in the woods a little distance 
to pray, and was set upon and murdered by a 
roving band of Kickapoos. After searching for 

1 20 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

him in vain, the rest of his party went on. By- 
short journeys they reached the Lake of the 
Illinois and turned northward. Winter over- 
took them; their food gave out; and they fell to 
eating acorns and grubbing up roots from be- 
neath the snow. When their moccasins wore 
out, — for most of their travel was now by 
land, — they made themselves shoes out of a 
cloak which the murdered friar had left behind. 
Weeks passed by as they journeyed on. They 
came now and then upon deserted Indian 
camps, and, desperate with hunger, they tried 
to eat the leather thongs which bound together 
the poles of the Indian lodges. They even 
chewed the tough rawhide of an old Indian 
shield which they had found. Tonty was sick 
almost constantly with fever and scarcely able 
to walk. Not until December did the party of 
five men reach Green Bay, where at last they 
were given a warm welcome by the Indians and 
some Frenchmen in a Pottawattomie village. 

Back in the valley of the Illinois, after the 
departure of the little group of French from the 
village, all pretense at peace was cast aside, and 
Iroquois fury turned itself loose. The Illinois had 
gone, leaving them only a deserted village, on 

121 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

which they wreaked their vengeance. Having 
destroyed the lodges by fire, they dug up the 
caches of com and burned and scattered the 
contents. Then they moved on to the village 
graveyard and tore down from the scaffolds the 
bodies that had been left there for a time before 
burial. From the graves of the village they dug 
up the long-buried relatives of the departed 
inhabitants, and scattered the bones in every 
direction. Out of pure fiendishness they de- 
spoiled this most sacred spot in the Indian 
town. On the half-burned poles of the lodges 
they hung skulls for the crows to pick. Then 
they followed the fleeing Illinois down the river. 
The Illinois gathered again at the place 
where their women and children had taken 
refuge. It was a long narrow bit of land on the 
north bank of the river. Between it and solid 
ground was a heavy, muddy swamp across 
which only a four-foot path of firm ground was 
to be found. On this semi-island, half a league 
in length and but fifteen or twenty paces wide, 
the women had built temporary lodges. Only 
from the water side could attack be made, and 
here they piled up their pirogues in the form of 
a wall. 

122 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

The Iroquois, following close after, camped 
on the shore directly across the river, where 
over a hundred huts were soon erected. On the 
bark of near-by trees they cut the savage story 
of the raid, and traced rude pictures of the 
chiefs and the number of warriors that each 
chief led out. Five hundred and eighty-two 
braves were thus recorded. On one tree a dia- 
gram was traced showing the scalps of the 
Illinois who had been killed and the number of 
captives who had been taken; while on their 
own record of warriors were figures represented 
as pierced with gunshot or wounded with 
arrows. 

The Illinois, terrified by the pursuit of their 
enemy, crossed the narrow path to the main- 
land and took up their journey downstream. 
At night they again camped beside the river; 
and soon the fires of the Iroquois camp shot up 
from the other shore. Another day's march, 
and again two camps appeared at night on op- 
posite banks. The Iroquois, who did not yet dare 
to make an attack, hung on the flanks of the 
Illinois like a pack of cowardly wolves. 

The Illinois traveled slowly, for they were 
greatly impeded by the women and children 

123 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and old men, and food must be gathered by the 
way. But just as slowly and deliberately fol- 
lowed the Iroquois. Occasionally they tried to 
put the Illinois off their guard by offerings of 
peace; but the Illinois were wary. The two 
armies, marching side by side with only the 
river between, passed Peoria Lake, and the men 
of the Peoria village crossed over and joined 
their brethren. When the Iroquois came to 
the deserted ruins of Fort Crevecoeur below the 
village, they stopped long enough to pull the 
nails out of the timbers of the skeleton of 
the boat by the water's edge. 

Day after day the Illinois and Iroquois 
walked beside the river. Night after night 
camp-fires faced each other across the waters. 
On the way the Illinois had gathered many of 
their tribes together. The Peorias, the Cahokias, 
the Moingwenas, the Tamaroas, and several 
minor tribes had joined the moving army like 
parts of a rolling snowball. If only they were 
armed with guns and free from their wives and 
children, they might strike a blow that the Iro- 
quois would long remember. But wiser coun- 
sels prevented such a move. 

It became more and more difficult to find 

124 



THE SCATTERING OF THE TRIBES 

food for so many; and as they neared the Mis- 
sissippi River they longed to separate and go off 
each tribe to its own hunting-ground. They 
held a parley with the enemy across the river, 
and a truce was declared. Then the Illinois 
tribes separated. The Moingwenas with several 
of the smaller tribes went down the Mississippi; 
the Peorias crossed to the western side; while 
the Kaskaskias and Cahokias preferred to go up 
the river toward the land of the Sioux. But the 
Tamaroas, most luckless of all, lingered near 
the mouth of the Illinois River. It was the 
opportunity for which the Iroquois had waited, 
for their long-time policy had been to "divide 
and conquer." Such had been their plan when 
they came into the valley, separating the 
Miamis from the Illinois and falling upon the 
latter. 

As soon as the other tribes were out of the 
way, the Iroquois attacked the Tamaroas. 
That feeble tribe fled in terror. Some of the 
men escaped, while the rest were massacred. 
Along the margin of the Illinois, not far from 
its mouth, was an open meadow; and here were 
enacted scenes such as had long made the Iro- 
quois hated and feared. The captives were put 

1 25 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

to horrible torments: some were roasted to 
death, some skinned ahve. The nerves and sin- 
ews of some were torn out; and when their 
tortures had done their work, the heads and 
even whole bodies of women and children 
were placed upon upright poles and upon stakes 
driven into the ground. 



XV 

A SIOUX WAR PARTY 

A LITTLE more than seven months before the 
Iroquois drove the Illinois tribes out of their 
river valley, a band of Tamaroas were paddling 
in wooden dugouts upon the Illinois River not 
far from the place where later occurred the mas- 
sacre of so many of their tribes. It was early 
in March, and throughout the land parties of 
Indians of every tribe were still roaming about 
on their winter hunt. That they should meet 
other wanderers along the streams and trails 
was therefore not surprising. This day they 
chanced upon a single canoe coming down the 
river. It was not one of the wooden pirogues so 
common among their tribes, but a small canoe 
of birch bark, and in it were three white men. 
Two of them were bearded and brown with 
wind and weather; while the third was smooth 
of face and large of frame, and was clothed in a 
long gray robe. 

The Tamaroas had seen few white men, but 
like most of the tribes of the Upper Mississippi 

127 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Valley they had heard of the French fort near 
the village of their brother tribe, the Peorias; 
and they had a keen desire to have the whites 
settle near their own town and bring them 
presents of iron weapons and bright-colored 
pieces of cloth. So now they stopped the canoe 
and begged the three men to come home with 
them and pay a visit to the village of their tribe 
on the western shore of the Mississippi a little 
way below the mouth of the Illinois. 

One of the bearded voyagers, Michael Ako, 
answered with an excuse, the big gray friar nod- 
ding pompous approval as the canoe slipped on 
downstream. Although the time of their par- 
ley was brief, the Indians had observed that the 
canoe of the whites was loaded not only with 
provisions, but with furs and merchandise, and, 
most important of all, with guns and powder 
and ball. They were going, not down the Mis- 
sissippi to the village of the Tamaroas and their 
southern neighbors, but up the Great River to 
the land of the Sioux, their enemies. 

Quickly the Tamaroas resolved that the 
Sioux warriors should never lay hands on the 
white men's guns. Already, armed only with 
arrows and clubs, they were a foe to be held in 

128 



A SIOUX WAR PARTY 

no light esteem. As countless as the trees in the 
woods and swift enough in their bark canoes to 
far outstrip the clumsy Illinois pirogues, what 
could the Northern braves not do with guns? 
There was still a chance to prevent such a 
catastrophe. 

The Tamaroas could not overtake on the 
water the swift-paddling white men. They 
tried it and the men in the canoe only laughed 
at them. But there was a place downstream 
quickly reached on foot and well fitted for an 
ambuscade. The fleet young Tamaroas braves 
darted across country and were soon lying in 
wait on a narrow point jutting out into the 
river. Unfortunately, however, for the plans 
of the Tamaroas, they were not careful enough 
with their camp-fire, and the white men, seeing 
the smoke, stole quietly by near the opposite 
shore. And so the little bark canoe continued 
its way to the mouth of the Illinois River; and 
before the end of the month its occupants, the 
friar Hennepin and his two companions, were 
well on their way up the Mississippi. 

While they were pushing their bark with 
difficulty against the current of this strange 
new stream, there was great .excitement in the 

129 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Sioux villages toward which they were journey- 
ing. Parties of Indians had gathered in the 
war dance, and painted savages, stripped and 
ready for battle, were leaving the towns of 
the Sioux for the south. They soon reached the 
waters of the great river not far from 
the Falls of St. Anthony, and from this point 
thirty-three bark canoes, manned by more 
than a hundred men, swept swiftly downstream. 
The Sioux were embarked upon a war against 
the Miamis and the Illinois ; and bitter with the 
desire for revenge was their leader, the old chief 
Aquipaguetin, for it was not long since that the 
Miamis had killed one of his sons. 

They had not traveled many days when, 
early one April afternoon, Aquipaguetin and 
his Sioux warriors, skimming swiftly over the 
waters, saw on the bank ahead of them three 
strange men. One of them, long of body and 
long of robe, was busily gumming a bark canoe 
which lay upon the shore. The other two men 
were engaged in boiling some meat in a kettle 
over a camp-fire. The three men looked up and 
saw the swarm of Indians coming down upon 
them. Hastily they threw away the fowl they 
were cooking, tossed the canoe into the water, 

130 



A SIOUX WAR PARTY 

jumped to their places, and began to paddle 
upstream to meet the Sioux braves. 

Here was adventure already for the eager 
Sioux. The young braves drew back their bows, 
and arrows sped through the air. While they 
were still some distance off, they could hear the 
men calling out to them in words of a strange 
tongue. At last the older men, having caught 
sight of the upraised calumet of peace, held 
back the young braves with their too impetuous 
weapons. 

In a few moments the Sioux had reached the 
canoe of the white men. Some of the Indians 
leaped into the water and some on shore, com- 
pletely surrounding the three strangers . Quickly 
the canoes all came to land, and Aquipaguetin 
and his fellow-chiefs made the prisoners sit 
down upon skins on the river bank. They were 
Frenchmen — two bearded traders and a big 
gray-robed friar — and around them in circles 
the Indians sat. True, the Sioux had seized the 
pipe of peace; but they would not smoke it, for 
they were not yet ready for peace. Michael 
Ako understood the significance of this conduct 
and was troubled. 

Ordinarily Father Hennepin might have been 

131 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

glad to omit the smoking ceremony, for ever 
since his boyhood he had detested tobacco 
smoke. As a young Recollet friar he had many 
years before been sent to the seacoast town of 
Calais, where he heard the stories of sailors just 
home from the seas. Indeed, so keen was his 
desire to hear accounts of travel and bold deeds 
that he would hide himself behind the doors of 
taverns, where the sailors came to smoke and 
drink, listening (in spite of the odor of tobacco 
which made him sick) to the tales of their voy- 
ages. But now, disagreeable as was the smoke 
of tobacco, he no doubt would have gladly 
drawn deep upon the pipe of peace if only he 
could see these Sioux put the calumet to their 
lips and thus banish the fear of an ever-ready 
tomahawk. 

"The Miamis! The Miamis! Where are 
they?" cried the Sioux in words which even 
Ako, the man learned in Indian tongues, did not 
understand at first. At length he caught their 
meaning; and with a paddle he drew on the sand 
a diagram to show that the Miamis had moved 
over to the land of the Illinois and were out of 
reach of the Sioux warriors. This was bitter 
news to the war party. Three or four of the old 

132 



A SIOUX WAR PARTY 

men laid their hands upon the heads of the 
white men and burst into weeping and lamenta- 
tions. Then with loud cries they leaped into 
their canoes, forced their captives to take up 
their paddles, and crossed the river to another 
landing-place. Here they held a council as to 
what they should do with the prisoners. 

The Sioux party decided to give up their 
expedition against the Miamis, but the disap- 
pointed Aquipaguetin seemed bent upon the 
killing of the whites. Two of the chiefs went to 
inform the captives by signs that they were 
to be tomahawked. The white men replied by 
heaping axes, knives, and tobacco at the feet of 
the crafty leader of the Indians, and, satisfied 
with the ransom, he said no more for a while of 
slaughter. 

That night the Indians gave back to the 
white men their calumet, still unsmoked. The 
captives divided the hours into three watches 
lest they be massacred in their sleep. Hennepin 
was resolved to let himself be killed without 
resistance, all for the glory of his faith; but Ako 
and the Picard slept with their weapons close 
to their hands. 



XVI 

THE LAND OF THE SIOUX 

When morning came, Narrhetoba, one of the 
chiefs of the Sioux, appeared before the white 
men, asked for their calumet, filled it with his 
own tobacco, and smoked it in their presence. 
Henceforth he was their friend, despite the wiles 
of the old chief Aquipaguetin. Taking to their 
canoes that day, the party with the three white 
captives paddled upstream toward the home of 
the Sioux. 

Each day at dawn an old man roused the 
braves with a cry, and before taking up the 
day's paddling they scoured the neighborhood 
for enemies. For nearly three weeks they were 
on the way before they drew near to the Falls of 
St. Anthony. Time and again the old chief, 
mourning over his son's unavenged death, 
threatened to kill the whites; then with cove- 
tous fingers he would gather up the gifts with 
which he made them buy their lives. Carrying 
with him constantly the bones of a dead friend, 
wrapped in skins decorated with the quills of 

134 



THE LAND OF THE SIOUX 

porcupines, he would often lay this bundle 
before the captives and demand that they 
cover the bones with presents in honor of the 
dead. 

As they journeyed the old chief would at 
times break out into a fierce temper and vow 
the destruction of the three strangers. But on 
such occasions he would be restrained by the 
other chiefs, who realized that if they killed 
these white men no more traders would come to 
the Sioux country bringing merchandise and 
guns — which they spoke of as "the iron pos- 
sessed by an evil spirit." 

The Sioux watched the curious ways of Friar 
Hennepin, and when they saw him looking 
upon an open book and moving his lips in mut- 
tered words they were almost on the point of 
killing him — for surely he was a sorcerer con- 
versing under his breath with an evil spirit that 
might be persuaded any moment to kill them 
all. Ako and the Picard, seeing the effect of the 
friar's devotions, urged him to leave off such 
dangerous practices. But the stubborn Henne- 
pin, instead of muttering his holy offices, now 
fell to singing from the book in a loud and cheer- 
ful voice, much to the relief of the Indians 

135 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

who feared this far less than the mumbled 
undertones. 

At last they left the river not far from the 
Falls of St. Anthony and hurried away north- 
ward toward the villages that lay in the region 
of the broad Mille Lac, the long-limbed Sioux 
covering the ground with great speed. They 
waded streams covered by a coat of ice from 
the frost of the night before. Neither Ako nor 
the Picard could swim, and so they often passed 
over on the backs of the Sioux. Hennepin was 
not built for speed, and the Indians, impatient 
at his slow progress, set fire to the prairie behind 
him and then, taking his hands, hurried the 
frightened man of prayer ahead of the licking 
flames. When they came to the first village the 
war party finally separated, each Sioux going 
to his own home town. 

The poor Picard, unable to conceal his grow- 
ing fears, had roused the quick contempt of the 
Sioux, who seized him with no gentle hands, for 
they saw in him a coward deserving of no such 
respect as they willingly bestowed upon his 
sterner friend Ako. He should be treated like 
an ordinary Indian captive. So they painted 
his head and face with different colors, fastened 

136 



THE LAND OF THE SIOUX 

a tuft of feathers in his hair, placed in his hand 
a gourd filled with small round stones, and 
made him sing shaking his rattle in the air to 
keep time to the music. 

Yet like the tribes of the Illinois Valley, the 
Sioux were a hospitable people. They fed the 
white men with fish and with wild rice, seasoned 
with blueberries, and served upon dishes made 
of birch bark. Then they proceeded to divide 
among themselves such supplies as still re- 
mained in the hands of the white men. Three 
chieftains, moreover, living in as many villages, 
adopted the three prisoners and carried them 
off to their homes. Perhaps Ako was not sorry 
to part with the friar, for the boastful ways of 
Hennepin had sorely tried his patience. 

It was the old chief Aquipaguetin who 
adopted Hennepin into his own family to take 
the place of the son he had lost. He gave the 
friar a great robe of ten beaver skins, trimmed 
with porcupine quills, and bade his half-dozen 
Indian wives treat him as a chieftain's son. 
And when he observed how fatigued Hennepin 
was after the long journey, the chief ordered 
that a sweat-bath be prepared for him. 

A sweat-house was set up, covered tightly 

137 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

with buffalo skins. Through a small opening, 
which was closed behind them, Hennepin and 
four braves entered, stripped to the skin. In the 
middle of this house, red-hot stones had been 
placed, and these, now sprinkled with water, 
gave off clouds of steam. As the perspiration 
poured from the men's bodies the four Indians 
laid their hands upon the friar and rubbed him 
briskly; and when he was on the point of faint- 
ing with weakness he was carried out of the 
sweat-house and covered again with his robe. 
Three times a week the friar was given this 
sweat-bath, which he said made him as well 
as ever. 

Hennepin and many of his belongings were a 
mystery to the Sioux Indians. His shaven head 
and face aroused their admiration, and so they 
put him to work shaving the heads of the young 
boys. He also bled the sick, and the strange 
medicines he carried about with him performed 
many a useful purpose among the ailing Sioux. 
He had brought with him an iron pot with three 
feet moulded in the shape of lion paws. This 
the Sioux dared not touch, unless they first 
wrapped their hands in a buffalo or deer skin. 
Not daring to keep it in the tepees or lodges, the 

138 



THE LAND OF THE SIOUX 

women with great fear in their hearts hung it 
up outside on the Hmb of a tree. 

In two other towns of the Sioux lived Ako 
and the Picard in primitive Indian fashion. 
The villagers found Ako a man after their own 
hearts, for he had lived with Indians, enjoyed 
their wild life, and knew their ways as did few 
white men. Gradually he learned the language 
of the Sioux, as he had learned the tongues of 
other tribes who dwelt in the river valleys to 
the south and east. 

In their home country which stretched west 
and north for many a league, the Sioux tribes 
lived for the most part in groups of tepees — 
lodges far different from the rounded houses 
of the Illinois. In building the tepee, which was 
small and conical in shape, the squaws first 
planted about twenty poles in a circle and then 
bound them together near the top with a stout 
leather thong. This framework was covered 
with buffalo hides, sewed tightly together into 
one piece with a flap for an entrance which was 
always toward the east. From the fire in the 
center of the tepee the smoke rose and passed 
out of a hole where the poles were joined at 
the top. Some of the Sioux, however, lived in 

139 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

so-called bark lodges, which were made with a 
ridgepole and roofed with the bark of the elm 
tree. 

The spring months of 1680, as they grew 
warmer and ran into summer, found the Sioux 
braves in the villages near Mille Lac eagerly 
looking forward to a buffalo hunt. Aquipa- 
guetin urged his foster son to join the party in 
a long trip to the southwest. But Hennepin 
wanted now to get back to civilization, for he 
had found little success in his ministry. So he 
asked permission to make a journey down to 
the mouth of the Wisconsin, where he said La 
Salle had promised to send men with supplies 
and merchandise. After some discussion the 
Sioux bade him do as he wished and take the 
Picard with him. Accordingly when the buffalo 
hunters gathered together from the various 
villages, the Picard once more joined his friend 
the friar. Ako, on the other hand, not loath to 
see them go, cast his lot in with the hunters. 

With Ouasicoude, or the Pierced Pine, the 
greatest chief of all the Sioux, as their leader, 
the hunting party followed the stream now 
known as the Rum River until it fell into the 
Mississippi a few leagues above the Falls of St. 

140 



THE LAND OF THE SIOUX 

Anthony. Here the women of the party halted 
to commence work on birch-bark canoes. 
While awaiting the arrival of those who had 
gone to collect long strips of bark, the women 
set up frames or little docks of poles upon which 
to build the canoes. The buffalo hunters, hav- 
ing first sent a few of their number down to the 
Falls to offer a sacrifice to the spirit of the 
water, set off on their trip with Ako in their 
midst; and Friar Hennepin and the Picard 
started down the Mississippi alone in their 
canoe, hoping to reach the band of whites at 
the mouth of the Wisconsin. 



XVII 

A BUFFALO HUNT 

Into a tree that stood beside the Falls of St. 
Anthony, a devout Sioux climbed, weeping 
and lamenting bitterly as he fastened to the 
branches a fine beaver skin. On the inside the 
skin had been carefully dressed and painted 
white, and it was decorated with the quills of a 
porcupine. And while he offered this sacrifice to 
the spirit of the Falls, he cried out in a loud 
voice : — 

"Thou who art a spirit, grant that our nation 
may pass here quietly without accident, may 
kill buffalo in abundance, conquer our enemies 
and bring in slaves, some of whom we will put 
to death before thee. The Foxes have killed our 
kindred. Grant that we may avenge them." 

Unk-ta-he, the god who dwelt under the 
Falls of St. Anthony, must have heard his 
prayer, for all that he asked was granted. Many 
buffalo fell to the lot of the hunters, and later in 
the season they attacked the nation of Foxes 
and great was their victory. They brought 

142 



A BUFFALO HUNT 

their captives home to offer to the spirit that 
had given them such glorious success. 

On this early July day Hennepin and the 
timid Picard, looking up as they made the 
portage around the Falls, saw the Sioux pre- 
senting his ornamented robe and heard him 
offer up his prayer. Then they pushed their 
canoe into the water and took up their journey 
upon the stream that shot out so swiftly from 
the foot of the Falls. The Sioux climbed down 
out of the tree and joined his friends on their 
hunt along the river and out over the plains. 

The crafty Aquipaguetin was with them, and 
as the days went by he kept thinking of the 
story Hennepin had told him of other white 
men sent out by La Salle with merchandise and 
arms to the mouth of the Wisconsin. Why 
should he not meet these men himself and 
receive their first lavish presents? Finally he 
could no longer restrain himself, and taking 
with him about ten men he paddled down the 
river after Hennepin and the Picard. The two 
white men had had many adventures. In their 
hunting they had not been fortunate, and many 
times they had come near to starvation. Once 
they had passed two days without food, when 

143 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

they came upon some buffalo crossing the river. 
The Picard managed to shoot one of the cows in 
the head. The animal being too heavy to haul 
ashore, they cut it into pieces in the water. 
Then they feasted so heartily that for several 
days they were too sick to resume the journey. 

Hennepin and the Picard were yet some dis- 
tance above the Wisconsin when Aquipaguetin 
overtook them. He did not stop long, but dipped 
paddle once more and soon reached the mouth 
of the river where Marquette, seven years 
before, had first seen the Mississippi. There he 
halted and looked about for signs of white men. 
No camp was beside the river, nor did any smoke 
rise as far as his eye could reach. Having 
searched in vain he at length turned northward 
with great wrath to seek out his foster son. 

The Picard had gone off to hunt and the friar 
was alone under a shelter they had set up to pro- 
tect them from the sun. Glancing up he saw his 
foster father coming toward him, club in hand. 
In terror of his life, he reached for a pair of the 
Picard's pistols and a knife. Perhaps the friar, 
armed with these unholy weapons, daunted the 
chief, for he contented himself with showering 
upon his adopted son maledictions for camping 

144 



A BUFFALO HUNT 

on the wrong side of the river and thus exposing 
himself rashly to the enemy. Then he pushed 
on to rejoin his fellow-Sioux. 

The party of hunters had now turned south, 
and in a few days they came upon Hennepin 
and the Picard, who joined them on the trail of 
big game. Many leagues down the Mississippi 
they hunted for buffalo, and altogether they 
captured a hundred and twenty of the shaggy 
beasts. While on the chase it was their practice 
to post old men on high points of the cliffs and 
neighboring hills to keep watch for enemies. 
One day Hennepin was busy with a sharp knife 
trying to cut a long thorn out of an Indian's 
foot when an alarm was given in the camp. 
Two hundred bowmen sprang to their arms and 
ran in the direction of the alarm. Not to be left 
out of the fighting, the Indian with the wounded 
foot jumped up likewise and ran off as fast as 
any of them. The women started a mournful 
song, which they kept up until the men re- 
turned to say that it was not an enemy, but a 
herd of nearly a hundred stags. 

A few days later the men from their high 
posts announced that there were two warriors 
in the distance. Again the young braves ran 

145 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

out only to find two Sioux women who had 
come to tell the chiefs that a party of Sioux, 
hunting near the end of Lake Superior, had 
found five other white men who were coming 
south to learn more about the three whites with 
Ouasicoude's band. 

Returning from their hunt some days later, 
they met these five new white men. Their 
leader was the Sieur Du Luth, a famous hunter 
and explorer who had come into the upper 
end of the Mississippi Valley by way of Lake 
Superior, and with him were four French cou- 
reurs de hois, Du Luth was a cousin of Henry 
de Tonty, and with great eagerness did he hear 
from Ako and his friends the story of the band 
of whites who had settled at the Peoria village 
and of the fort they had built beside the Illi- 
nois River. 

There were eight white men now in the band 
that journeyed northward toward the Sioux 
towns about the Lake. The Indians soon made 
up their minds that Du Luth was a man of 
power among the whites — more so, perhaps, 
than Ako, the leader of the first three visitors 
who had come into their country. But neither 
Ako nor Du Luth seemed to hold the gray- 

146 



A BUFFALO HUNT 

robed friar in the high esteem to which he 
thought himself entitled. 

When they had arrived at the villages the 
Sioux gave a great feast to the palefaces, who 
had come into their country from the south 
and from the north, and for more than a month 
red men and white lived together in peace, each 
learning from the other. September drew near 
to a close, and as winter approached the white 
men grew anxious to return to their own kind. 
They secured the consent of Ouasicoude, who 
with his own hand traced for them a map of the 
route they would need to take. 

With this chart they embarked in two canoes 
upon the Rum River, and a few days later they 
had reached the Mississippi and were carrying 
their light craft around the Falls of St. Anthony. 
Here two of Du Luth's men, much to their 
leader's wrath, stole robes which were hanging 
in the trees as sacrifices to the spirit of 
the water. They stopped at the mouth of the 
Wisconsin to smoke the meat of some buflFalo 
they had killed. While they were camped at 
this point, three Sioux came to tell them of 
something which had happened since they had 
left the northern villages. A party of Sioux, 

147 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

led by one of the chiefs, had plotted to follow 
after the eight white men and kill and plunder 
them. But Ouasicoude, the Pierced Pine, the 
ever friendly chief, was so enraged that he 
went to the lodge of the chief of the conspirators 
and in the presence of his friends tomahawked 
him. 

Thankful for their deliverance, the whites 
paddled their canoes up the Wisconsin River, 
crossed the portage to the Fox River, and fol- 
lowed that stream to Green Bay and its settle- 
ments of French priests and traders. Mean- 
time back in the country they had left, the 
Sioux were waging fierce war with the Illinois 
and other nations of the South. Paessa, a 
Kaskaskia chief who had left the village of his 
people, in spite of Tonty's remonstrances, be- 
fore the coming of the Iroquois, had led a party 
of Illinois braves into the fastnesses of the 
Upper Mississippi against their long-time foes. 

In the valley of the Illinois and in the valleys 
of the rivers which flowed together to make the 
current of the mighty Mississippi, no white 
man was now to be found. When the first 
snows came, the tribes of the Upper Mississippi 
found themselves with a few guns and knives 

148 



A BUFFALO HUNT 

and bits of bright cloth and the memory of the 
white man's ways. But instead of the pale- 
faced Frenchmen, who came bearing presents 
and asking for peace, they now had with them, 
skulking through their valleys, the faithless 
Iroquois, with hands red with the blood of con- 
quered nations and hearts seared with the 
flames with which they burned their captives. 



XVIII 

THE MIAMIS REPENT 

The camp-fires of five hundred Iroquois 
glowed in the frosty night air, the smoke hover- 
ing above like a drifting cloud under the moon. 
Some of the five hundred lay sleeping, their 
weapons close to their hands, while others were 
standing guard against possible danger. Many 
weeks had passed since they had hounded the 
Illinois out of the valley of the river that bore 
their name, and now all up and down its length 
was quiet. No Illinois village along the shores 
sent the smoke of its lodge-fires upwards. No 
winter hunting party camped by the frozen 
stream. At the same time, though deserted by 
its ancient dwellers, the valley was not wanting 
signs of the thing which had caused their de- 
parture. The moon which that night hung over 
the returning Iroquois shone upon all the length 
of the river, revealing scenes for a hundred 
leagues that spoke as plainly of the Iroquois 
passing as does the track in fresh snow tell of 
the passing of a wolf. 

ISO 



THE MIAMIS REPENT 

The trail began at the great village of the 
Kaskaskias. Here the pale light fell upon the 
half-burned ruins of lodges, the scattered con- 
tents of the caches, the desecrated graveyard, 
and the wolves that with savage howls still 
hung about the town their human cousins had 
ravaged. Down the river went the trail marked 
by ashes of deserted camps, past the lodges of 
the Peorias, the ruined Fort Crevecoeur, and 
the ribs of the unfinished ship gleaming white 
in the moonlight. Then came the ashes of more 
camps, always facing each other as they fol- 
lowed the river down to the open meadow near 
the mouth where stood the grim figures of the 
tortured Tamaroas. 

No, the trail of the Iroquois was not hard to 
trace in the Illinois Valley. Nor was it a diffi- 
cult task for an Indian to find the route they 
had taken when, after massacring the Tama- 
roas, they had moved across country to the val- 
ley of the Ohio River many leagues to the 
southeast. The Iroquois warriors, proud of their 
victories and glorying in their cruel deeds, 
traveled with little fear. Laden with furs and 
plunder, with scores of Illinois slaves in their 
camp, they did not know that they were being 

151 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

followed. But they were. The Kaskaskia chief, 
Paessa, who had set out with a war band 
against the Sioux before the Iroquois raid, had 
now come back to the valley of his nation only 
to find ruins and the well-marked trail of the 
Iroquois. 

There were only a hundred in the band, but 
in their desire for revenge they knew no such 
thing as numbers. With fury adding to their 
speed they started upon the track of the enemy 
and now night by night through the Ohio Val- 
ley their camp-fires were coming nearer to those 
of the Iroquois. The Iroquois were moving on 
toward home. Far to the east lay their villages 
of long houses in the land where the Ohio River 
had its northern source. They had scattered 
the Illinois and devastated their country. The 
weaker Miamis they had not harmed, perhaps 
because they had not yet found it to their 
advantage. But now they were entering the 
hunting-grounds of the Miamis who ranged 
from the Lake of the Illinois south as far as the 
Ohio. 

They happened one day upon a party of 
Miami hunters and without hesitation the 
Iroquois fell upon them, killing some and 

152 



THE MIAMIS REPENT 

adding others to the Illinois prisoners whom 
they were carrying home. The winter de- 
scended upon them with such vigor that they 
halted and built three forts at the corners of a 
triangle, each fort at two leagues distance from 
the others. Here the Miamis sent a delegation 
asking for the release of their captives. But 
they were mocked at by the vainglorious Iro- 
quois. Then they offered a present of three 
thousand beaver skins as a ransom for their 
men. The overbearing conquerors, having 
attacked their own allies, now committed an 
unpardonable sin against Indian custom. They 
accepted the gift of the Miamis, but refused 
to release their captives. The Miamis sadly 
realized that they had deserted their neighbors, 
the Illinois, only to ally themselves to a band of 
traitors. 

The winter did not halt the avenging party 
under Paessa. And one night the daring band 
slipped between two of the forts and pitched 
camp in the middle of the Iroquois triangle. 
At daybreak some in those forts should taste 
death for the outraged graveyard and for 
the trampled meadow where Tamaroas had 
died. 

IS3 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

But that same night two Iroquois hunters 
saw their camp-fire and approached to see who 
they were. One of the two had entered the 
camp when a young and rash IlHnois brave, 
unable to contain himself, leaped upon him and 
struck him dead. Quick as a flash the other was 
gone. Their secret was out. Surprise was now 
impossible and the band prepared for a terrific 
encounter. It came with the daylight. On 
every side the Iroquois bore down upon them. 
Outnumbered five to one, the brave Illinois held 
their ground all through the winter day. At 
evening both sides withdrew. A third of the 
dauntless hundred were dead, among them the 
gallant Paessa. Yet with the morning the 
unconquerable band again took up the fight. 
Three times they hurled themselves upon the 
enemy. At last, seeing the hopelessness of their 
battle, they drew away and cleared themselves 
from the hated triangle. 

The news of these battles in the Ohio Valley 
passed quickly throughout the Miami tribes. 
The chiefs at the great village on the head- 
waters of the Kankakee, near the foot of the 
Lake of the Illinois, pondered over the situation 
in council with much concern. They had allied 

IS4 



THE MIAMIS REPENT 

themselves with the Iroquois against the Illinois, 
and now their Iroquois allies had treacherously 
attacked them. In view of the indomitable 
courage which the Illinois had just displayed in 
the battle of the triangle, what would happen 
to the Miamis when the Iroquois were gone and 
the Illinois tribes came back to avenge them- 
selves upon their neighbors ? 

They had other important things to think 
about as well. A few leagues north of their vil- 
lage, where the St. Joseph River emptied into 
the Lake, there had lain for many months the 
ruins of Fort Miami, built a year before by 
La Salle and demolished in April by the de- 
serters from Fort Crevecoeur. But now Fort 
Miami was rebuilt; for out of the East La Salle 
had come again. Away back in July on dis- 
tant Lake Ontario he had found some of 
the Fort Crevecoeur deserters, shot two who 
showed fight, and captured the rest. Then he 
had set out to the Illinois country to rescue 
Tonty ; but it was November before he landed at 
the mouth of the St. Joseph River. On the day 
that his canoes touched shore, Tonty, sick and 
more than half-starved, was struggling north- 
ward along the west shore of the Lake, trying 

iSS 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

to reach the French settlements with the news of 
the Iroquois raid. 

La Salle left some of his men to rebuild the 
fort and pushed on down the Kankakee, his 
anxiety for Tonty steadily increasing. At the 
Kaskaskia village he struck the trail the Iro- 
quois had left behind them, and followed it 
down the river to the meadow of massacre near 
the mouth. Nowhere did he find trace of Tonty, 
and with heavy heart he came back to his men 
at Fort Miami. In his absence a band of New 
England Indians, mostly Abenakis and Mohe- 
gans, had pitched their lodges about the fort, 
and when La Salle appeared they joined them- 
selves to his party and swore to follow him as 
their chief. 

One important fact now stood out clearly in 
the mind of La Salle. If he was to accomplish 
anything in the exploration and settlement 
of the Mississippi Valley, he must bring the 
Miamis, the Illinois, the Shawnees, and other 
inhabitants of the Great Valley into such firm 
alliance with each other and with himself that 
they need have no fear from Iroquois or any 
other invaders. If he could get such an alliance 
started, he would feel free to make his long- 

iS6 



THE MI AMIS REPENT 

delayed trip to the mouth of the Mississippi 
and open up trade by that means with France 
across the seas. With this in mind he took fif- 
teen men and set out on the ist of March to 
open communication with the Illinois, occa- 
sional bands of whom were beginning to wander 
back into their valley. 

The men traveled easily over the snow with 
their snowshoes, but the glare of the sun was so 
intense that La Salle was stricken for several 
days with snow-blindness. While he lay suffer- 
ing, unable to see or to sleep, some of his men 
came upon tracks which led them to the lodges 
of a hunting party of Fox Indians, from whom 
they learned to their great joy that Tonty was 
alive and had reached a village of Pottawat- 
tomies on Green Bay. They also learned that 
Ako and Hennepin and the Picard had re- 
turned safely to the settlements on the Lake. 

Pressing on down the valley, not long after- 
wards, he met with a band of Illinois. They 
told him the story of the Iroquois raid and 
showed him letters from black-robed priests, 
which had been given them by the Iroquois. 
These letters seemed to be in the nature of pass- 
ports safeguarding the Iroquois in case of their 

IS7. 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

capture by the Illinois. The Illinois added that 
their enemies had other letters addressed to 
Father Allouez, and they interpreted the whole 
affair as meaning that the Black Gowns wished 
them to be attacked. 

Now La Salle had for many years disliked the 
Jesuits, and he had accused them of trying 
to block his plans and wreck his enterprises. 
Especially did he hate the black-robed Father 
Allouez. The priest knew this, and it was the 
news of La Salle's coming that had caused him 
to slip out of the village of the Kaskaskias on 
that Christmas Eve of 1679. But now La Salle 
wished to quiet the fears of the Illinois, and so 
he assured them that their distrust of the black- 
robed priests was groundless. He told them of 
his plans to start a colony in the Illinois Valley 
and settle many French soldiers there to pro- 
tect the tribes that made their homes along the 
river; and he urged them to make friends again 
with the Miamis and join forces with them 
against their common foe from the outside. 

The Illinois were well pleased with the plans 
of La Salle, and they went off promising to carry 
his message to their people. La Salle sent a 
messenger to tell Tonty to wait for him at 

158 



THE MIAMIS REPENT 

Mackinac, and then returned to his fort on the 
St. Joseph. He had made a beginning with the 
IlHnois; his next step was to bring the Miamis 
into an alliance. 

In the Miami village south of his fort, during 
this time, there was much uncertainty. The 
Indians watched the white men's movements 
with anxiety and dreaded the wrath of the 
Illinois when they should return. Yet the Iro- 
quois still seemed to hold them under a spell. 
Into the Miami village that spring came three 
Iroquois warriors, swaggering and boastful. 
But in spite of their treachery the Miamis dared 
not harm them. The visitors told of their feats 
of battle, derided the French, and urged the 
Miamis to continue the war against the Illinois. 

But one fine spring day La Salle himself, with 
ten of the despised Frenchmen and a handful 
of New England Indians, entered the village. 
With curious eyes the Miamis watched the 
boastful Iroquois. Would they defy the French 
now? Upon the moment of La Salle's arrival, 
the three warriors made haste to visit him and 
pay him devout respect. But the white chief 
received them coldly, threatened them, and 
dared them to say in his presence what they had 

IS9 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

said before his coming. Abashed and silent they 
slunk away and fled from the village that night. 
The Miamis had had their lesson — a lesson 
which they had been slow to learn. The dis- 
comfiture of the boasting Iroquois had broken 
the last tie that held them to their false friends 
of the Five Nations. They came together now 
in a grand council with La Salle in the lodge of 
the principal chief, and in order that all might 
hear they stripped the bark sides from the lodge 
and opened it up to the throng outside. 



XIX 

A CHIEF COME TO LIFE 

When the Miamis had assembled in and 
about the open lodge of the chief, La Salle had 
one of the New England Indians bring into the 
council the presents which he wished to give. 
Then he chose first from the pile a roll of to- 
bacco, and presenting it to the Miamis said: — 

"May this tobacco, as you smoke it in your 
pipes, clear the mists from your minds, that you 
may think without confusion. 

"And this," he said, laying down a piece of 
blue cloth, "is to cover the bodies of your rela- 
tives just killed by the Iroquois. May it turn 
your eyes from their dead forms to the peaceful 
blue sky where the sun shines so brightly. 

"And here is a piece of red cloth to cover the 
earth so that you may see no longer the blood 
of your brethren. Its color is like that with 
which you paint your faces for a feast, and will 
mean to you that hereafter you will always live 
in pleasure and joy. 

"Here are cloaks to cover the bodies of the 

i6i 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

loved ones you have lost. May they be a mark 
of our esteem and friendship. And take these 
fifty hatchets to help you raise a magnificent 
tomb in their memory. And those who have no 
beautiful ornaments to wear in the feast which 
you will give to those who are gone — let them 
wear these necklaces and bracelets, these rings 
and glass beads and little bells, and let them 
paint themselves with this paint." 

Then he drew forth thirty sword blades and, 
stooping over, he planted them in a circle in 
the dirt floor of the lodge, around and inclosing 
the presents he had given. 

"And so," he said, "will I make a palisade of 
iron about you so that the bodies of your dead 
friends may receive no harm." 

He straightened himself beside the circle of 
iron, and while the Miamis within the lodge and 
outside watched him he continued : — 

"Your dead friends must be contented now. 
We have paid them our reverence. They will 
only ask further that we let them lie in peace; 
that we wipe away our tears and take care of 
the loved ones who step into their places. But I 
wish to do more than this. 

"I know how sadly you have mourned for 

162 



A CHIEF COME TO LIFE 

Ouabicolcata, your great chief who is dead. 
Think of him no longer as dead. His spirit and 
his soul have come to life once more in my body. 
I will raise his name among you. I am another 
Ouabicolcata, and I will take the same good 
care of his family as he did while he lived. No 
more am I Okimao as you used to call me. 
Henceforth my name is Ouabicolcata. Your 
chief lives again in the body of a Frenchman 
who is able to give you all the things which you 
need." 

Seldom do Indians in council interrupt a 
speaker, but as the white leader promised to 
take up the name and life of their dead chief the 
whole gathering broke into cries of rejoicing 
and praise. When a son was lost from an Indian 
family the sorrowing parents often adopted in 
his place a captive from another nation. So now 
it did not seem strange that in place of their 
lamented chief they should take to their hearts 
and homes this white chief, and call him by the 
old name Ouabicolcata, and love him as they 
loved the man who was dead. 

La Salle's men now brought three immense 
kettles. "In these," said the white chief, "you 
will make a great feast for the dead come to 

163 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

life." Then to his newly found relatives he pre- 
sented shirts and cloaks, a box of knives and 
hatchets, . and many other wonderful things 
saying: "See how I will give to my people the 
things they need." 

"And now, my brothers," said La Salle, "we 
come to a matter of much consequence" — 
and he presented the Miamis with six guns. 
"There is a great master across the sea. He 
is famous everywhere. He loves peace. He is 
strong to help us, but he wants us to listen to 
his words. He is called the King of France, the 
greatest chief of all those who rule on the other 
shore. He is anxious that peace shall come 
upon all people and that no one shall wage war 
without asking permission of his servant Onon- 
tio, the governor at Quebec. Therefore, be at 
peace with your neighbors and most of all with 
the Illinois. You have had your quarrels with 
them. But have you not been enough avenged 
by their losses ? They want peace with you, yet 
they are still strong enough to do you harm. 
Content yourselves with the glory of having 
them ask for peace. And their interest is yours. 
If they are destroyed, will not the Iroquois 
destroy you the more easily? So take these 

164 



A CHIEF COME TO LIFE 

guns, but use them not for waging war, but for 
the hunt and for self-defense." 

Then at last La Salle chose from his bundles 
two wampum necklaces — the gifts most com- 
mon among Indians. Turning to the thirty 
New England Indians who were with him, he 
said: "These are other Miamis who come to 
take with you the places of the warriors whom 
the Iroquois have killed. Their bodies are the 
bodies of Indians from New England, but they 
have the spirit and the heart of the Miamis. 
Receive them as your brothers." 

The council broke up in a tumult of joy and 
brotherly feeling. High honor had been paid to 
the dead and splendid gifts bestowed upon the 
living. On the next day the Miamis came before 
La Salle to dance and present gifts. They did 
homage to the good spirits of the sky and the 
sun and to the God of the French. Then one of 
their chiefs, Ouabibichagan, presented to their 
new brother ten beaver skins saying: — 

"Never, my brother Ouabicolcata, have we 
seen so wonderful an event. Never before have 
we seen a dead man come to life. He must be a 
great spirit who can thus bring back life. He 
makes the sky more fair and the sun more 

I6S 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

bright. He has given you with life, clothes with 
which to cover us who are wont to be naked. 

"We are ashamed that we have not equal 
gifts to give you. But you, Ouabicolcata, are 
a brother. You will excuse us. For it was to 
redeem your bones from the Iroquois that we 
made ourselves poor. We gave them three 
thousand beaver skins. This little gift of ten 
skins is but a sign — is only like the paper which 
you Frenchmen give to one another — it only 
means that we promise you all the beavers in 
the river when next spring shall come." 

Again he gave him ten beavers and told him 
of the joy the Miamis would feel as they went 
upon their hunts with their brother alive again, 
and the spirit that gave him back his breath 
guarding over their happiness. With a third 
gift of skins he spoke of the French king in these 
words : — 

"We will listen to him; we will put aside pur 
arms; we will break our arrows, and hide our 
war-clubs at the bottom of the earth. The Illi- 
nois are our brothers since they acknowledge 
our father, and the French king is our father 
since he has given life back to our brothers." 

A fourth and a fifth gift of beaver skins he 

i66 



A CHIEF COME TO LIFE 

made and bound the Miamis to Ouabicolcata 
and their new brothers from New England. 
At last he handed the white chief for the sixth 
time ten beavers and said : — 

"Do not count the skins, my brother, for we 
have none left. The Iroquois have all the rest. 
But accept our hearts in trust for what we will 
do when spring has come again." 

After the gifts the dancing began again and 
also the feasting from the new kettles. And all 
day long the three wives of Ouabibichagan, 
sisters to one another, and the wives of Miche- 
tonga, also sisters, danced in the sunshine of 
spring and in the joy of a people reconciled to 
their neighbors and happy in the pleasant 
childlike pretension of a lost brother come back 
to live with them once more. 

As the Miamis danced a band of Illinois were 
following swift trails westward to the banks of 
the Mississippi. They had talked with the great 
white chief who had left Fort Crevecoeur so 
long ago in the good old days when Chassagoac 
was alive and when their villages smiled in the 
sun along the Illinois River. They were carry- 
ing back to the Peorias and the Kaskaskias and 
the Tamaroas and to all their brethren the mes- 

167 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

sage from La Salle, that he was still determined 
to make his trip to the mouth of the Great River, 
and that he had come to reunite the Miami and 
Illinois, to plant his men as a guard against the 
Iroquois, and to snatch back for them the beau- 
tiful valley of the Illinois. 



XX 

STRANGE RITES 

Spring was coming, and the giant of the 
Great Valley, lying stretched at full length, was 
beginning to stir uneasily. Too long had he 
slept with his head in the snow far up in the 
country of the Sioux. His outspread arms, flung 
to the mountains on either side, began to move, 
and to the tips of his fingers, entwined in the 
hills of the Alleghanies and the rough piles of 
the Rockies, a new life came. The Mississippi 
River was waking from its winter sleep. 

In the land of the Iroquois, by distant Lake 
Ontario, the ice in little brooks was melting, 
and snow-water was running down from their 
banks to flow through the length of the Ohio 
Valley into the Great River. Over by the foot 
of the Lake of the Illinois, where the head- 
waters of the Kankakee crept out from the 
country of the timorous Miamis, cakes of ice 
were starting on a long journey down the 
widening river into the Illinois, there to run 
smoothly through a deserted valley, past the 

169 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

ruined village of the Kaskaskias, the empty 
Peoria lodges, and the forsaken fort to find the 
wide river in the land of the luckless Tamaroas. 

Even in the cold Sioux country the tiny 
sources of the Mississippi were stirring; and the 
waters grew less chill as they slipped out of 
the sight of the Sioux hunters and took their 
way southward past the far-driven tribes of the 
Illinois — here the Kaskaskias, lower down the 
Peorias — until they reached the haunts of 
the Tamaroas and were joined by the waters 
of the Illinois. 

Southward ever the spring water flowed. 
Here from the Western plains came rushing 
like a buffalo bull the tawny Missouri, bringing 
down logs and trees that had passed many and 
strange peoples on their way from the far 
unknown West. Out of these Western countries 
came also the Arkansas to cast its burden into 
the river farther down. 

Now all these waters, gathered in a mighty 
stream, flowed on past the strange Southern 
tribes — past the Taensas, watching their sa- 
cred fires and guarding their temples in eight 
villages gathered on a crescent-shaped lake, 
and past the Natchez and the treacherous 

170 



STRANGE RITES 

Coroas and Quinipissas — till at last, under the 
warm Southern sun, the river poured itself out 
of the bottom of the valley into the salt waters 
of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Thus in the year 1682 the Great Valley 
awoke from its quiet winter. Soon in the North 
the Indian women could stir the eager soil and 
begin their planting. The Indian braves could 
toss their snowshoes into a comer of the lodge, 
throw off their winter garments of buffalo hide, 
and go out into the sunshine as free and happy 
and unencumbered as God had made them. 

All the valley was a playground for the 
Indians. Its woods and its streams, its prairies 
and its hills, its herds of buffalo, its deer and 
bear and wild fowl were theirs. They could 
build their lodges and hunt game where they 
willed. They could trade with the tribes of the 
North and South and of the river valleys on 
either side; or they could fight with them if 
they chose. It was a valley full of the best gifts 
of the good spirits — this land of the Indians. 
What if there were up around the rivers of the 
North and East occasional white men? They 
were few and they brought wonderful gifts. 
Surely there was room for all. 

171 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Below the villages of the Arkansas tribes, 
which Marquette and Joliet had reached nine 
years before, the Indians had seen no white 
man's canoe. It is true their old men told 
a tale, handed down through long years, of a 
Spaniard who came into the Great Valley from 
the East with an army that ravaged and plun- 
dered and killed. The leader disappeared, and 
his men drifted down the river to its mouth and 
left forever the basin of the Mississippi. But 
many generations had passed since the time of 
the mysteriously vanishing De Soto and his 
cruel followers. Between the French far to the 
northeast and the Spaniards as far to the south- 
west there lay the length of the river with room 
in its broad and smiling valley for the homes 
and hunting-grounds of a hundred tribes. 

It was the month of March, in the villages of 
the Arkansas tribes, and the air was soft and 
mild, and the peach trees were in blossom. The 
banks of the river were low and drowned now 
with the spring floods ; and thick barriers of cane 
rose up from the swampy shores. Since Mar- 
quette and Joliet visited the Arkansas, no 
white men had entered their villages ; but they 
had learned of the events in the North. When 

172 



STRANGE RITES 

they found that a powerful white chief was 
building a fort on the Illinois River and giving 
wonderful presents to the neighboring tribes, 
they sent a delegation to invite him to come 
to their country and live. 

La Salle had said that he was coming down 
the river soon, and they had seen the ribs of 
the great ship he was building. The Arkansas, 
moreover, had brought home gifts from him to 
their neighbors and friends. But he had not 
come in these two long years, and the Indians 
had been busy with their own concerns- — with 
their hunting and their care of the fields, and 
with a constant vigilance to prevent an attack 
by surprise from their enemies the Chickasaws. 

On this particular March day a dense fog lay 
upon the river. In the spring fogs were fre- 
quent and were not without danger; for under 
cover of these concealing mists the Chicka- 
saws might more easily approach unawares. 
But this morning there were those who watched 
and they brought news into the upper village 
that a band of men was coming down the river 
in canoes. The village flew to arms. The 
women gathered together and hurried away to 
the inland, their papooses in cradles swinging 

173 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

from their shoulders. The men, weapons in 
hand, began to howl their war cries and beat 
their skin drums. Within an hour the fog dis- 
appeared, and they saw a party of men en- 
camped on the bank opposite the village. On 
a point of land jutting out into the river stood 
a man who called across to them. 

The Arkansas thrust one of their dugouts 
into the stream and hastened to meet the 
visitors. When they were within earshot, the 
man on shore called out in the Illinois tongue 
to ask who they were. There happened to be 
an Illinois Indian in the dugout and he replied 
that they were Arkansas. One of the warriors 
from the village drew back the string of his bow 
and let fly an arrow. Then they sat silent and 
waited. It was their way of inquiring whether 
peace or war was sought by the strangers. The 
man on shore did not attempt to return the fire. 
So with lightened hearts they drew near to 
learn more of the peaceful newcomers. 

It was a white man who met them. His hair 
was black and long, and his right hand was 
encased in a glove. It was the Man with the 
Iron Hand who greeted them on behalf of his 
leader La Salle. Without delay the Indians sent 

174 



STRANGE RITES 

an embassy to smoke the calumet with La Salle, 
and soon the Arkansas were welcoming in their 
village on the west bank of the river the entire 
band of strangers. La Salle had come at last as 
he had promised, but he had not come in a 
mighty ship, but in a fleet of bark canoes with 
nearly half a hundred men. 

There were old friends in his company 
besides Tonty. The stout-hearted young Bois- 
rondet and the gray-gowned Father Membre 
were there, and perhaps a score of other 
Frenchmen. There were also nearly as many 
of the New England Indians who had joined 
La Salle at Fort Miami ; and with them was a 
handful of Indian women, who had refused to 
be left behind, and three little Indian children. 

The tribes living in this upper Arkansas 
village were known as Kappas or Quapaws; 
and they proved themselves royal entertainers. 
They gave the strangers quarters by them- 
selves, built lodges for them, and brought them 
provisions in great abundance. The day fol- 
lowing his arrival they danced before La Salle 
the calumet dance. First the chiefs of the tribe 
took their places in the midst of an open space, 
while warriors brought them two calumets 

175 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

decorated with plumage of many colors. The 
bowls of the calumets were of red pipestone and 
full of tobacco. Warriors who took part in the 
dance held gourds hollowed out and filled with 
pebbles; and two of them had drums made 
of earthen pots covered with dried pieces of 
skin. 

One group of Indians began to sing, at the 
same time dancing and shaking their gourd 
rattles — all in perfect rhythm, though not 
necessarily in the same time. An Indian might 
sing with one time, dance with a different time, 
and shake his gourd with a rhythm more slow 
or rapid than either. Yet the rhythm of each 
series of motions or sounds would be perfect in 
itself. 

When the first group stopped, another group 
took up the song and the dance. Two men beat 
the skin drums, while the chiefs gravely drew 
smoke from the long-stemmed calumets and 
passed them on to La Salle and his men. Then 
those of the warriors who had gained renown 
seized, one after another, a great war club, and 
with it struck blows upon a stout post planted 
in the ground. With his blows each brave 
recounted his feats of bravery and told of the 

176 



STRANGE RITES 

scalps he had taken, the enemies he had killed, 
and the times when he had been first of his band 
to strike the enemy. 

When they had finished this ceremony, they 
presented gifts of buffalo hides to La Salle. 
Then La Salle's men also one by one struck the 
post and told of their own brave deeds and gave 
presents to the Indians. And all the while the 
chiefs, Indian and French, smoked the pipes 
that bound them to peace. 

Doubtless this ceremony of the calumet — 
with the dancing and singing, the recounting of 
brave deeds, and the giving of gifts — seemed 
a very curious performance to the French. 
But equally curious to the Indians must have 
seemed the ceremonies of the white men on that 
selfsame day. 

La Salle asked permission of the chiefs to 
raise, in the village, an emblem of the God of 
the French and of the great King of France. 
To this the Indians readily agreed. Whereupon 
Tonty was dispatched with some of the men 
to make preparations. They cut and smoothed 
a huge wooden pillar, and upon it they drew a 
cross, and above the cross they carved the 
arms of France with these words : — 

177 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

*' Louis the Great, King of France and Navarre, 

REIGNS THIS THIRTEENTH DAY OF MaRCH, i682." 

A procession was formed, and the pillar was 
carried in state to the open space in the midst 
of the Indian town. Here the procession divided 
into two columns, with La Salle at the head 
of one and Tonty leading the other. Every 
Frenchman was in arms, while the New Eng- 
land Indians with their wives and children 
steadfastly followed their white leaders. 

Father Memb re began to sing a curious song; 
and then the whole procession took up the 
chant and marched three times around the 
open square. Three times they sent up a great 
cry, "Vive le Roi," and discharged their guns 
in the air. Then they planted the pillar firmly 
in the ground, cried again, "Vive le Roi," and 
shot off another volley with their guns. 

When it was quiet once more La Salle began 
a solemn speech in French. The awe-stricken 
Indians did not understand his words; but later 
the speech was interpreted for them and they 
knew that, by the sign of the cross and the 
king's arms, the white chief was claiming the 
whole broad valley for his king beyond the seas. 
What mattered it to the Indians ? If the white 

178 



STRANGE RITES 

men would bring them gifts, and if this mysteri- 
ous pillar would protect them from harm and 
safeguard them from their enemies, the distant 
king was welcome to his claim. 

With wondering faces the Indians gathered 
about the pillar when the strange ceremony- 
was over. They placed their hands upon the 
hewed wood and then rubbed their naked 
bodies — as if to transfer to themselves some 
of the medicine in the white men's shaft. 

Two days later the strangers embarked in 
their canoes and left the village of the Kappas ; 
and with them went two Arkansas guides to 
point out the way to their allies, the Taensas, 
who lived on a lake near the river many leagues 
below. 



XXI 

THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

For several days the canoes of La Salle's 
party passed wet banks and thick caneb rakes. 
No longer were to be seen the otter and the flat- 
tailed beaver, for they had been driven out or 
devoured by the alligators that now infested 
the river. As the canoes slid past these huge 
monsters, sometimes nearly twenty feet in 
length, the Frenchmen sat snugly in the center 
of their barks for fear of following the way of 
the beaver. 

At length the Arkansas guides indicated a 
small cove into which a little brook flowed. It 
was the beginning of the inland trail to the 
Taensas; and so the whole party landed and 
pitched camp on the shore of the bay. La 
Salle asked Tonty to take with him the two 
guides, a Frenchman, and one of the New 
England Indians and proceed up the brook 
toward the villages. 

The men paddled their canoe as far as the 
water would permit, then packed it upon their 

i8o 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

shoulders, and under the guidance of the 
Arkansas Indians picked their way across the 
swampy country. Finally they reached a lake 
lying in the form of a crescent, and crossing it 
in their canoe they came upon an Indian town. 
The men in the canoe drew in their paddles 
and stepped out on the shore of the lake. 
Tonty looked in amazement at the Indian 
village before him, for in all of his wanderings 
over the continent he had never seen houses 
like these. Instead of lodges made of bark or 
mats or skins fastened to a f ramework'of poles, 
here were great houses built with thick walls of 
sun-dried mud and dome-shaped roofs of canes. 

To the Arkansas guides, however, the village 
presented no strange scene. They were in 
familiar country; and when they reached the 
shore they began a weird Indian song. Back in 
the village the Taensas who heard them knew 
they were friends, and came out to welcome 
them. They led the visitors first to the lodge 
of the chief, which was a building forty feet 
in length with walls two feet thick and ten or 
twelve feet high, surmounted by a domed roof 
that reached to a height of about fifteen feet. 

They passed through the doorway and stood 

i8i 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

in the semi-darkness of a large room. In the 
center of the room a torch, made of dried canes, 
was burning. Its light gleamed upon shields of 
burnished copper that hung on every wall and 
lit up dimly hides painted with all manner of 
pictures. In the flickering light of the torch 
white-robed figures stood out from the dusk of 
the room. They were old men of the tribe, sixty 
of them, and they stood facing an alcove where, 
on a couch, with his three wives beside him, sat 
the chief. He was dressed like the old men, in a 
white robe made from the bark of the mulberry 
tree; and pearls as big as peas hung from his 
ears. 

There were girls and women in the room, and 
here and there a child with its mother; but over 
all the group was a respectful quiet, a dignified 
reverence for the chief who sat upon the couch 
gazing curiously at Tonty and his companions. 
The old men, standing with their hands upon 
their heads, burst out in unison with a cry, 
"Ho-ho-ho-ho," and then seated themselves 
upon mats laid on the floor. The visitors also 
were given mats to sit upon. 

One of the Arkansas guides rose and began to 
address the chief. He told him that the white 

182 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

men had come to make an alliance with him, 
but just now they were sorely in need of food. 
Then he swung from his own body a buffalo 
skin and presented it to the chief. Tonty, too, 
delighted him with the gift of a knife — for the 
knives and hatchets of the Taensas were rude 
instruments made of flint. 

The chief ordered food to be sent to the men 
who were waiting over on the Mississippi and 
a banquet to be prepared for their guests. It 
was a dignified feast, at which slaves waited 
upon the chief. They brought him dishes and 
cups, made of pottery with the fine art in which 
his people excelled. No one else used his dishes 
or drank out of his cup. 

A little tottering child started to cross the 
floor between the chief and the flaming torch. 
With a quick reproof his mother seized him and 
made him walk around the torch. Such was the 
respect which they paid to the living chief; and 
when a chief died it was their custom to sacri- 
fice perhaps a score of men and women, that 
they might accompany him to the country 
beyond the grave and serve him there. 

When the feast was over and the visitors 
came out from the lodge of the chief, they saw 

183 



THE MAN ,WITH THE IRON HAND 

across the way a building somewhat similar in 
shape and size. It was the sacred temple of the 
tribe. Into the mud walls that inclosed it were 
stuck spikes on which were hung the skulls of 
enemies. On the roof, facing the rising sun 
which the Taensas worshiped, were the carved 
figures of three eagles. Inside the temple were 
preserved the bones of departed chiefs. An 
altar stood in the middle of the room, and here 
the sacred fire was kept burning. Two old 
medicine men sat beside it, unwinking and 
grave, guarding it by day and by night. 

The chief was highly pleased with his vis- 
itors. If the man who had sent Tonty to his 
village had been an Indian, it would have been 
beneath the chief's dignity to call upon him. 
But he sent word to La Salle by Tonty that he 
would pay him a visit, and on the next day he 
set out. He sent before him a master of cere- 
monies with six men to prepare the way. They 
took with them a beautifully woven mat for 
him to rest upon, and with their hands they 
swept the ground over which he would pass. 
As he came down the little creek in his dugout 
canoe his followers beat upon drums and his 
wives and the other women in the party sang 

184 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

songs of praise. He landed and approached La 
Salle's camp, dressed in his white robe and pre- 
ceded by two men carrying white plume fans 
and a third bearing two shields of shining 
brass. The two chiefs met and exchanged pres- 
ents ; and after a quiet call the dignified Taensas 
chief returned to his village on the lake. 

When La Salle's men pushed their canoes out 
from the shore of the cove, well laden with pro- 
visions from the Taensas, they left behind their 
Arkansas guides and four of the New England 
Indians who were fearful of the dangers below. 
But there were now two new members of the 
party, for the Taensas had given to Tonty and 
his Mohegan companion two slave boys, cap- 
tured from the Coroas farther south. 

They had not gone far when they observed 
upon the river a single canoe, to which a num- 
ber of the party gave chase. The canoe of 
Tonty, outstripping the others, had nearly 
reached the strange bark when they saw a band 
of perhaps a hundred Indians, armed with 
bows and arrows, on the shore ready to defend 
their comrade in the canoe. Tonty, after con- 
sulting with La Salle, offered to take a pipe of 
peace to the band of savages. He crossed to the 

i8S 



THE MAN WITH^ THE IRON HAND 

shore, presented the calumet for the Indians to 
smoke, and made a gift of a knife to one of the 
old men who seemed to be a chief. The Indians 
were of the nation of Natchez, and they showed 
their desire for peace by joining hands. This 
presented some difficulty to Tonty, but he 
bade his men join hands in his place, and the 
treaty of peace was concluded. Soon the rest 
of the party came ashore, and La Salle, taking 
with him a few of his men, made a visit to the 
village which lay three leagues from the river. 
The Natchez were a powerful people related to 
the Taensas, and, like them, they worshiped the 
sun and maintained a sacred temple. La Salle 
spent the night in their village; and while he 
slept a swift runner hurried through the dark- 
ness to the village of the Coroas to ask the chief 
to come and visit their guest. The chief of the 
Coroas set out at once and traveled all night to 
reach the Natchez village and pay his respects 
to La Salle. For several days the white leader 
visited with the Natchez, and when he rejoined 
Tonty on the shore of the river the Coroa chief 
came with him. He accompanied the white men 
down the river to his own village, six leagues 
below, where his tribe gave the strangers a 

i86 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

friendly reception. Here Tonty's little Coroa 
slave seized the opportunity to escape to his 
people. But the boy who had been given to the 
Mohegan was not so fortunate and remained 
with the party of explorers. 

Thus far peace had attended the journey of 
La Salle; but it was not to be so always. With- 
out stopping they passed the village of the 
Humas and the high bank where a red pole, or 
baton rouge, marked the boundary between 
the territory of the Humas and the tribes to the 
south. As they approached the village of the 
Quinipissas, they heard the sound of drums and 
war cries, and a party sent out by La Salle to 
reconnoiter was received with a volley of arrows. 
La Salle decided not to stop ; and picking up his 
men, passed on down the river. 

At length, early in April of the year 1682, the 
party reached the long-dreamed-of mouth of 
the river; and La Salle, on the 9th of the month, 
full of joy, took possession, in the name of the 
King of France, of all the lands watered by the 
rivers that flowed into the basin of the Missis- 
sippi. No white man before them had traveled 
from Canada to the Gulf. As they saw the cross 
rise in the swampy land near the sea and the 

187 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

arms of their king held up to the southern sky, 
the hearts of La Salle and Tonty, of Father 
Membre and every Frenchman there beat high 
with pride. 

And the dusky New England Indians — 
devoted to their leader and far-wandered in a 
valley which meant nothing to them — rejoiced 
also, as every Indian rejoices and feels pride in 
the end of a long journey, be it for vengeance, 
for game, or for adventure. As for the young 
Coroa lad, who stood in their midst, the only 
representative of the people of the Mississippi, 
he was too young and his people and his race 
were too young to understand what had hap- 
pened in their valley. 

The voyagers now turned the prows of their 
canoes to the north and began the slow ascent 
of the river. They were so nearly out of pro- 
visions that La Salle determined to stop at 
the Quinipissa village for food, in spite of their 
former hostility. Coming upon four women of 
the tribe, he sent one of them home to her people 
with presents and a message of peace. Keeping 
the other three as hostages, he waited across 
the stream from the village. Soon there came 
Quinipissas who invited him to cross over to 

i88 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

their side. La Salle did so and pitched camp a 
short distance from the village. The Indians 
brought him food and he released the three 
women, but still kept a careful guard. 

That night watches were posted with un- 
usual care. Crevel, one of the Frenchmen, was 
the last to keep guard. It was now within a 
half-hour of dawn. Already faint lights were 
beginning to shine, when he heard a noise in the 
canes. He spoke to a comrade who said it was 
only some dogs. But Tonty had heard their 
words and called to them to be on guard, and La 
Salle, in whose eyes was little sleep, leaped up 
with the cry, "To arms." In a moment the 
camp was ready for an attack. 

At the same instant came the war cries of the 
Quinipissas on all sides of them. Guns flashed 
and arrows flew in the spreading light. When 
the sun came up and the Quinipissas looked 
upon their slain warriors they turned and fled, 
with the whites after them until recalled by 
La Salle. The New England Indians came ex- 
citedly back to camp waving scalps which they 
had taken from the enemy. 

Later in the morning La Salle with half of his 
men went to the edge of the village and broke 

189 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

up the Indians' pirogues under their very eyes. 
Then with no one hurt, the party of explorers 
put oJBF upstream in their canoes. Coming again 
to the country of the Coroas they were wel- 
comed to the village, but there was a strange 
new feeling in the air. The French saw Quini- 
pissas among them, and learned that they were 
allies. The young Coroa captive soon had told 
the story of the battle to his people. When the 
voyagers sat down to eat they found them- 
selves surrounded by more than a thousand 
warriors. They ate with their arms within 
quick reach, for no one knew when massacre 
might be attempted. Taking counsel, however, 
the Indians finally allowed their visitors to 
proceed up the Mississippi in peace. 

When they reached the village of the 
Taensas, the chief in his white cloak was as dig- 
nified and kind as ever, and rejoiced greatly at 
the scalps which the Mohegans showed him. 
Again they passed the villages of the Arkansas. 
And now La Salle fell sick — so seriously that, in 
alarm lest he should not reach Canada, he sent 
Tonty ahead to carry the good news of the trip 
to the French settlements. Tonty with four 
men hurried northward. He had passed the 

190 



THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI 

Ohio and was drawing near the Illinois Valley 
when one day thirty Illinois warriors burst out 
of the woods with drawn bows, taking the party 
for Iroquois. But just in time one warrior 
recognized Tonty and cried out, " It is my com- 
rade! They are Frenchmen!" After a short 
stop at the Tamaroa village, Tonty pushed on 
to the white settlements. 

By the time La Salle, slowly recovering from 
his illness, joined Tonty at Mackinac, word 
had come to the white men about the Lakes 
that the cross and the arms of France had been 
raised at the mouth of the Mississippi. And the 
Illinois tribes in the upper valley, still afraid to 
return to their deserted homes, took heart when 
they heard of the safe return of La Salle and the 
Man with the Iron Hand from their long trip to 
the sea. For they had not forgotten La Salle's 
promise to build a fort to protect them from the 
Iroquois, and make it safe for them to return to 
the valley they had lost. 



XXII 

THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

On the south bank of the river Illinois, a mile 
or more above the plain where lay the deserted 
village of the Kaskaskias, a great rock rose 
sheer from the water to a height of over a hun- 
dred feet. Three sides of the rock were like the 
walls of a mediaeval castle. At the fourth side 
by a rugged pathway one might climb labori- 
ously from behind to the level top where oaks 
and cedars grew. 

In the month of January, 1683, this rock was 
the scene of busy doings. On the scant acre of 
ground upon its summit. Frenchmen had felled 
trees and were building cabins and storehouses 
and palisaded walls and erecting a fortification 
about the whole area. Up the steep pathway 
other Frenchmen and stalwart Indians were 
dragging timbers to aid in the construction of 
fort and dwellings. Moving here and there 
among the men was the dominant figure of La 
Salle; and yonder were the iron-handed Tonty 
and his friend Boisrondet. Many of the French- 

192 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

men had been with La Salle on his trip to the 
Gulf the year before; and the busy Indians were 
his faithful band of Mohegans and Abenakis. 

La Salle had reached Mackinac after his 
arduous trip to the sea, with little strength left, 
but with many plans for the future. He had 
explored the river to the mouth. It now re- 
mained for him to make use of the Great 
Valley. His enemies, the rich merchants of 
Quebec and Montreal, had become so bitter 
in their opposition to him that he knew it would 
be difficult to carry out his plans from Canada 
as a base. And so he determined to cut loose 
as soon as possible from the valley of the St. 
Lawrence and bring his supplies and men by sea 
from France to the mouth of the Mississippi, 
thence up the river to the trading-posts which 
he would found among the tribes along its 
banks. 

Such was the vision that rose before La Salle 
day and night — a vision of the long river val- 
ley held together by a chain of forts and depots 
for the fur trade, of friendly Indians coming 
with their canoes laden with furs to exchange 
with the French for merchandise, of French 
settlements growing up in the wilderness, of a 

193 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

great post at the mouth of the river, and of swift- 
sailing ships plying between the Gulf and far- 
away France. 

But to bring this vision to reality La Salle 
must first repopulate the Illinois Valley and 
unite the Indian tribes of that region to repel 
the bands of Iroquois who threatened again to 
invade the valley of the Great River. So he 
sent Tonty out from Mackinac, in the fall of 
1682, to begin a fort around which they might 
gather a colony of the far-scattered tribes. Not 
long afterward, La Salle, hearing fresh rumors 
of an Iroquois invasion, sent Father Membre on 
to Canada and France to report the exploration 
of the Mississippi, and then joined Tonty on the 
Illinois River. 

Many times in their journeyings up and down 
the Illinois, La Salle and Tonty had noted the 
high rock rising from the riverside near the 
Kaskaskia village. What a rallying-point this 
would make for the scattered people ! La Salle 
was well content to build here his wilderness 
fort; and without waiting for winter to loosen 
its icy grip upon the land he put his men, red- 
skinned and white, at work. 

They were many weeks building the citadel 

194 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

upon the rock; and when, toward spring, it was 
finished. La Salle and Tonty looked out upon 
the country roundabout with a feeling of great 
security. In the river below them was a small 
island, and here they prepared to plant their 
crops. It was within gun-shot of the fort, from 
which a raking fire could prevent any enemy 
from landing and attacking the men while at 
work in the fields. Four heavy pieces of timber 
were placed so as to project over the edge of the 
rock, and from these, in case of need, water 
could be drawn straight up from the clear cur- 
rent of the Illinois River. 

The fortress completed, there remained the 
gathering of the tribes. On a day in March, 
1683, Tonty climbed down the rugged pathway 
and set out across the prairies to visit the Indian 
tribes. Nearly a hundred leagues he trailed 
from village to village. In the lodges of the 
Shawnees he told of the return of La Salle to 
the Illinois Valley and reminded them of their 
promise to come and join him. 

He visited the Miamis and talked of the 
Iroquois who had killed so many of their 
braves. Even now rumors of another invasion 
were in the air. But if the Miamis would come 

19s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

out to the colony of the French they need have 
no fear, for Ouabicolcata had come again into 
the valley of the Illinois and on the bank of 
the river had built a strong fort to guard his 
brothers the Miamis. 

It was many leagues toward the setting sun 
that Tonty traveled before he found the tribes 
of the Illinois. But one day he walked into the 
camp of his old-time companions and seated 
himself upon their mats. With great joy they 
received him and gave into his left hand the 
calumet of peace and feasted him as they had 
done three years before in their ancient home. 

They were wondering, perhaps, if the ice 
were now breaking up in the river beside the 
forsaken village and if the snow were melting 
down to nourish the white-oak trees on the op- 
posite shore. They saw the whole river again 
as they listened to the words of the Man with 
the Iron Hand. Well did they know every 
bend in its course. And what Indian could for- 
get that great pile of rock on the south side of 
the river a half-league above their old town? 
Every crevice and seam in its weather-worn 
sides came back to them. They saw in their 
minds the ravine on the eastern side where a 

196 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

little brook ran down to the river. They saw- 
again the rugged path that led to the summit; 
and they tried to picture Frenchmen climbing 
to the heights where the fort of La Salle now 
stood. It was a fort to guard them from the 
Iroquois, said Tonty, if only they would come 
back and settle in their old haunts. Nor was it 
difficult to persuade them. La Salle was their 
father, they said. Only a year ago he had vis- 
ited them, told them of his plans, and urged 
them to forgive the Miamis and join with them 
against the common foe. 

Their fear of the Iroquois called them; their 
love for their father La Salle and their brother 
Tonty and for the gifts these men brought 
called them; and perhaps, not least of all, the 
old village where they had wooed and married 
their Indian women, where they^had brought 
home scalps and captives, where they had en- 
tertained their friends and buried their dead 
— their home of other days — called them. 
Yes, they would come back to the river of the 
Illinois and raise new lodge-poles on the site 
of their old town in the colony of their father 
La Salle. 

So Tonty returned from his circuit of the 

197 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

tribes and climbed the rock to Fort St. Louis to 
report to La Salle the coming of the Indians. 
Soon the tribes began to gather. The Shawnees 
came with some smaller tribes from the south 
and settled directly behind the rock. Nor was 
it many weeks before the Illinois, trailing back 
through the valley they had given up, came in 
a great rejoicing army, with their women and 
their papooses, to the north bank of the river. 
Strong-armed Indian women raised the poles 
for new lodges and laid fresh mats upon the 
framework. They brought wood which they 
laid in piles down the center of each long lodge; 
and soon out of holes in a hundred roofs rose 
the smoke from the fires of the Illinois. They 
stirred the soil in the neglected fields and 
planted new crops. As best they could they put 
to rights the desecrated graves of their dead, 
and took up again the life they had left off at 
the time of the Iroquois invasion. 

But it was not quite the same to these 
Illinois, for the blight of overwhelming disaster 
still lay upon them and fear smoldered deep 
down in each heart. When they looked up the 
river to where Fort St. Louis stood guard like a 
sentinel upon its high rock, they took courage; 

198 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

but when they turned away and looked upon 
the scenes which they had just redeemed from 
Iroquois desolation, their hearts sometimes 
failed them. 

Families from all of the tribes of the Illinois 
Confederacy now gathered in the village, ready 
to join hands in a common cause with the 
Shawnees and other nations from the south, 
and eager to ally themselves once more with 
the fickle Miamis who were still at their vil- 
lages to the east. 

Only the return of La Salle to the Illinois 
country had kept the Miamis from leaving their 
villages near the foot of the Lake and fleeing to 
the Mississippi; and even now, with Fort St. 
Louis built and garrisoned and with the Illi- 
nois and Shawnees gathered in the vicinity, 
they were thrown into a panic by news from the 
St. Lawrence River that the Iroquois were on 
their way to the valley of the Illinois. 

The French and Indians at La Salle's colony 
having learned of the Miami alarm, La Salle 
made ready to go at once to their villages to 
reassure them. The Illinois, however, looked 
with dread upon his going, and they tried 
to dissuade him. Perhaps they recalled too 

199 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

vividly the disasters that followed his departure 
three years before. Then, too, they had heard 
evil rumors. The French at Green Bay had told 
their traders that if the Illinois settled near La 
Salle, he would abandon them to the Iroquois. 
The Indians frankly recounted these tales, and 
La Salle patiently told them of his enemies 
at Green Bay who wished him ill, — perhaps 
because they were jealous of his beaver trade, 
— and he promised them that, although it was 
important for him to go on from the Miami 
villages to Canada, he would come back at once 
if the Iroquois should approach. 

Partly reassured they let him go. They did 
not know what grievous burdens weighed upon 
La Salle as he took his way eastward. At the 
fort in charge of Tonty he had left only twenty 
Frenchmen, with hardly a hundred rounds of 
powder and ball. Again and again he had sent 
men down to the Canadian settlements to bring 
back supplies and ammunition and French 
volunteers for his garrison. But they had not 
come back; and La Salle rightly suspected 
that the new governor. La Barre, who had 
succeeded Frontenac at Quebec, was in league 
with his enemies and willing to wreck his colony 

200 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

by preventing his men from returning with sup- 
plies and reinforcements. His only hope was to 
go in person to Canada to secure aid; and this 
he intended to do after seeing the Miamis. 

Finding the Miamis full of terror and ready 
to fly, he immediately called the chiefs and 
elders in to a council. If the Miamis, instead of 
fleeing to the Mississippi, would move over and 
join his colony at the fort, they would all fight 
their battles together. He was going East now 
for reinforcements ; but if he should hear of the 
near approach of the Iroquois, he would join 
them at Fort St. Louis at once. The Miamis 
gave attentive ear to La Salle. Was he' not 
their brother Ouabicolcata, raised from the 
dead to protect them? The next day they be- 
gan to move in three great armies toward Fort 
St. Louis, while La Salle went on toward the 
Lake. 

From the Miami camp a hunter started out 
one day accompanied by his dog. Following a 
roebuck, he strayed off from his band and was 
suddenly attacked by four Iroquois and fatally 
wounded. The dog, seeing his master shot 
down, began to bark at the top of his lungs. 
The Iroquois, in alarm, took to their heels. At 

201 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

once the Miamis were hot upon their trail. 
They followed their tracks until they came to a 
trail so broadly beaten as to indicate a large 
army of the enemy. Realizing their lack of 
numbers, the Miamis retraced their steps and 
made haste to combine their three armies into 
one before continuing the journey. 

The alarm, meanwhile, had reached the col- 
ony about the fort, and war parties of Illinois 
left their village to meet the oncoming foe. Soon 
they encountered an Iroquois party of forty 
and took one of them prisoner. With savage 
glee they brought him into camp. Perhaps he 
was one of the hated band that had despoiled 
their village. It was their turn now for ven- 
geance. They presented the captive to Tonty 
to be put to death. But Tonty replied that it 
was not the custom of his people to kill their 
prisoners of war. Then they offered him to their 
allies, the Shawnees, who with savage ceremo- 
nies burned him to death. 

The Illinois had won a victory over the in- 
vaders, but it did not bring them security. They 
wished for the return of La Salle; and Tonty 
sent off two runners at top speed to tell his chief 
that if he did not return at once the tribes were 

202 



THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES 

likely to melt away to the Far West and out of 
reach of the Iroquois. 

It was not long until the army of the Miamis 
arrived. A league above the fort, on the north 
side of the river, was a long rock bluff, and here 
they settled and put up their lodges. La Salle, 
true to his promise, soon came back to the col- 
ony, much to the joy of both Indians and 
whites. From his high fort on the rock he now 
looked down upon Indian villages, with their 
thousands of Indian braves gathered like the 
army of a mediaeval baron, and rejoiced in the 
thought that a long"^ step had been made to- 
ward the realization of his dream of the Great 
Valley. 



XXIII 

FORT ST. LOUIS 

The summer that followed the return of La 
Salle to Fort St. Louis was an anxious one for 
the colony. Iroquois were still in the valley, and 
the Indians about the fort were full of an appre- 
hension that sometimes almost amounted to 
panic. Yet they clung to their faith in their 
French protectors; and the bands of invaders, 
not wishing to taste the vengeance of so strong 
a union of their enemies, did not that summer 
molest the group of villages. 

But the months of waiting brought no aid or 
reinforcements to the fort on the high rock, and 
each day made it more clear that La Salle's ene- 
mies were in power in Canada. More strongly 
than ever there grew upon him the determina- 
tion to go in person to France and fit out an ex- 
pedition which could come by sea to the mouth 
of the Mississippi and thence with men and sup- 
plies to the fort on the Illinois. Finally he could 
wait no longer; and so, late in August, accom- 
panied by two Shawnee Indians, he left the fort 

204 



FORT ST. LOUIS 

in charge of Tonty and started upon his long 
journey. 

La Salle had not gone far upon his way when 
he met a fleet of canoes laden with Frenchmen 
and supplies. If there arose in his mind any 
flicker of hope that these were his own men re- 
turning at last with reinforcements, it soon died 
out, for the leader of the party, the Chevalier 
de Baugis, brought with him a commission as 
commander of Fort St. Louis in place of La 
Salle, to whom he presented an order from the 
new governor of Canada commanding him to 
proceed at once to Quebec. There was nothing 
to be done but submit. Before continuing his 
journey, La Salle sent a letter to Tonty telling 
him to give up gracefully, but to remain at the 
fort to take care of their private possessions. 

When the Chevalier de Baugis arrived at the 
rock, Tonty turned over the command of the 
fort; and the garrison, now reinforced but full 
of unquiet, began to prepare for the winter sea- 
son. It was not a period of harmony at the fort, 
for the new officer had little ability in governing 
a Western post and spent much of his time in 
trying to alienate the followers of La Salle. 
Tonty, in spite of his leader's orders to live 

205 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

at peace with his successor, was not able to 
endure such performances, and many and bit- 
ter were the clashes between the two men that 
winter. 

But with the spring came an event which, for 
the time at least, made the men at the fort put 
aside their quarrels and work side by side. Iro- 
quois bands, it appeared, still lingered in the 
Western country, particularly around the head- 
waters of the Kankakee and over toward the 
Mississippi. They had not had sufficient cour- 
age to attack the colony which La Salle had 
founded; but they found other prey. 

A group of fourteen Frenchmen, in canoes, 
was making its way, in March, 1684, toward 
the Illinois. The new governor. La Barre him- 
self, had sent them out to trade in that region in 
spite of the fact that the King of France had 
given to La Salle exclusive control of the fur 
trade in the valley of the Illinois. They were 
approaching some rapids in the Kankakee 
River one day, little suspecting danger, when 
two hundred Iroquois suddenly appeared on 
the bank. 

Sixty Indians leaped into the water and cap- 
tured the canoes, which with little ado they 

206 



FORT ST. LOUIS 

drew to the bank. The terror-stricken French- 
men wildly protested as the dripping savages, 
their wet bodies glistening and their faces 
lighted with the lust of plunder, pillaged the 
seven canoes and carried off the owners. With 
fine contempt the Iroquois tore into pieces the 
Frenchmen's permits from the governor. A few 
of the Indians took charge of the canoes with 
their valuable load of merchandise, while the 
others drove their captives across country for 
nine days toward Fort St. Louis. 

As they went the white men were plied with 
questions as to the fort. Was the Man with the 
Iron Hand there? Was La Salle at the fort? 
When the French replied that a new com- 
mander was in charge and that La Salle had 
been recalled, the wily savages said that they 
knew it, but were asking to see if the French 
were telling the truth. They were going, they 
said, to attack the fort. Finally they let the 
Frenchmen go, threatening to break their 
heads, however, if they were found in the 
neighborhood of the fort. 

The Iroquois pushed on to their conquest. 
When they sighted the high rock, they ad- 
vanced cautiously, only to find the frowning 

207 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

citadel prepared for battle. Runners had come 
to the fort the day before with news of the Iro- 
quois approach. Up to the base of the rock the 
invaders crept and drove arrow and ball at the 
heights above. They even tried an assault up 
the rugged pathway, but were repulsed with 
great loss. For six days they besieged the wil- 
derness castle, but all in vain. At length they 
made a few captives from the neighboring 
tribes and tried to creep off. But the bands 
of Shawnees and Illinois and Miamis had been 
waiting their turn, and now hard upon the heels 
of the retreating foe they pushed with eager 
weapons. They killed many and brought their 
scalps home in triumph to the villages around 
the rock. Fort St. Louis had had its baptism 
of fire — and the fire had only hardened the 
courage of the garrison and the Indians of the 
colony. 

Two months after this attack upon the fort, 
there came down the river a fleet of French 
canoes under command of Sieur de la Duran- 
taye and containing sixty Frenchmen as rein- 
forcements for the garrison upon the rock. 
Durantaye was a brave officer who had been 
sent out the year before by Governor La Barre 

208 



FORT ST. LOUIS 

to the posts on the Lake of the Illinois. Many a 
time he had found it necessary to make trips to 
Fort St. Louis to give assistance to the incapa- 
ble Chevalier de Baugis. On this occasion there 
came with him from Green Bay the priest Al- 
louez, who gathered up his black robe as he 
climbed the steep pathway to the fort. 

Well did the Indians know this priest. Years 
before he had come to take the place of their be- 
loved Father Marquette. And then on Christ- 
mas Eve, in the winter of their disaster, he had 
heard from the Miamis that La Salle was com- 
ing and had vanished like a spirit into the night. 
In the years that followed there had come from 
Green Bay, where he had gone, constant rumors 
that La Salle was their enemy. Now was this 
man come again to them when La Salle was 
gone and Tonty robbed of his power. 

The visit of Durantaye was not alone to 
bring reinforcements, for he had with him an 
order from Governor La Barre commanding 
Tonty to leave the fort and go to Quebec. Tonty 
did not hesitate. Boisrondet, with a few faith- 
ful followers, remained in the fort, while the 
Man with the Iron Hand, taking leave of white 
and red friends, set off almost alone up the river 

209 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

toward distant Canada. He had spent nearly 
SIX years in the wilderness — faithful years in 
which he had followed his leader through ill fate 
and fortune. He had made warm friends with a 
dozen tribes and helped gather them together 
in the colony about Fort St. Louis. Now with 
a great bitterness he saw fort and colony turned 
over to those who, though French, were yet 
enemies of his friend La Salle. 

Durantaye returned to the Lake, and De 
Baugis was left to do as he pleased. The In- 
dians did not find in him the qualities they had 
admired in La Salle and Tonty. He knew little 
of their ways and perhaps cared less to learn 
about them. Trouble soon arose in the colony 
and he was powerless to check it. The Miamis, 
rising suddenly, fell upon the Illinois with great 
slaughter; thus making probable a disruption 
of the colony and the inevitable destruction of 
both nations by the Iroquois. 

A year of incompetent rule went by. Then in 
the month of June, 1685, word came to the 
tribes that Tonty had come back. Down the 
river which he had ascended alone with sorrow 
in his heart, he now came in triumph, and 
climbing the path to the fort held out in his left 

210 



FORT ST. LOUIS 

hand an order to De Baugis to give him back 
the command of the fort and garrison. 

La Salle in France had won the favor of the 
king. He had been given ships to make a voy- 
age to the mouth of the Mississippi and men to 
man them, and guns and supplies and merchan- 
dise. All this had happened in the spring and 
summer of 1684. La Forest, one of La Salle's 
lieutenants, was sent from Paris to Canada to 
take charge of Fort Frontenac, which La Barre 
had seized, and to give to Tonty a commission 
as captain and the governorship of Fort St. 
Louis. La Forest had gone out to Fort Fron- 
tenac that fall, but winter prevented Tonty 
from reaching his far western post until June of 
the following year. 

After the disappointed De Baugis had left, 
Tonty set about conciliating the tribes. This 
was no easy task. But the Illinois and the 
Miamis finally listened to his persuasions, ac- 
cepted his gifts, and agreed once more to live in 
peace. 

To Tonty it must have seemed that the 
vision which he cherished and shared with La 
Salle was nearer realization than ever before. 
It was now almost a year since La Salle had set 

211 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

sail from France. Perhaps by this time he had 
already founded his fort at the mouth of the 
Mississippi and was coming up the Great River 
to join the followers who so eagerly waited for 
him at Fort St. Louis. 



XXIV 

THE LOST CHIEF 

From their winter camp on the river banks 
eighty leagues below Fort St. Louis a band of 
Illinois looked up, late in February of 1686, to 
see their friend Tonty, with twenty-five French- 
men and a handful of Shawnees, come paddling 
down the stream. In June of the year before, he 
had come back to take command of the fort 
with the good news that La Salle had sailed 
from France for the mouth of the Mississippi. 
During the summer he had persuaded their 
chiefs to join in peace once more with the 
Miamis. 

But with the fall disquieting news had come. 
Rumor said that La Salle had landed on the 
shore of the Gulf; that one of his ships was 
wrecked and pillaged by the Southern tribes 
who had attacked him; and that he was strug- 
gling with Indian foes and sorely in need of food. 
Tonty, greatly alarmed, had gone up to Mack- 
inac, but had learned little to encourage him in 
regard to his leader. 

213 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Returning to the fort, most of the way on 
foot, he sent out Indians to the Mississippi River 
in search of news. But they found none. Then 
Tonty determined to go himself down the river 
to the sea in search of his lost chief. He started 
in the middle of winter with nearly half of his 
garrison. For forty leagues they dragged their 
canoes over the ice of the river until they came 
to open water halfway down to the Indian 
camp. 

Tonty had little time to linger in the camp, 
but he had exciting news to tell the Indians. La 
Barre, governor of Canada, had been withdrawn 
and the new governor. Marquis Denonville, 
was planning a great war upon the Iroquois vil- 
lages. He wanted Tonty to gather a band of 
Western Indians and join with other bands 
under Du Luth and Durantaye to reinforce the 
army from Canada, and he had sent word to 
Tonty to come to Canada to confer with him 
about the matter. But Tonty had insisted that 
his first duty was to search for La Salle; the 
other must await his return. Would the Illinois 
join him the next spring and help wage war 
upon the land of their enemies ? 

Tonty knew well that there could only be one 

214 



THE LOST CHIEF 

answer to his question. The Illinois, who keenly 
remembered the fiendish raids upon their land, 
now saw their opportunity for revenge; and at 
once they began to dream of the time when 
Tonty should return from his voyage. But they 
were anxious, too, for news of La Salle, and they 
gave Tonty five of their men to accompany him 
to the mouth of the river. 

With this addition to the party Tonty's men 
dipped their paddles into the cold stream and 
were soon out of sight, leaving the Illinois camp 
buzzing with excitement. The fleet of canoes 
soon entered the Mississippi and made swift 
progress down its broad current. Somewhere 
above the mouth of the Arkansas River, after 
Tonty and his men had been traveling many 
days, they happened upon a war party of a hun- 
dred Kappas. The Indians made ready for war 
at first sight of the canoes, but, finding who it 
was, brought out the pipe of peace and together 
the two parties went on to the village. 

Here and at the lower Arkansas villages the 
Indians danced the calumet dance before Tonty 
and sent him on his way in peace. The French- 
men made a visit to the village on the lake where 
the white-robed Taensas welcomed them. They, 

2IS 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

too, danced the calumet dance and were most 
cordial to the visitors. But Tonty could not 
stop long. His canoes were full of food for the 
hungry La Salle, and he had men and guns to 
help his chief fight battles. He must hasten 
on to the sea. At the village of the Coroas he 
stopped long enough to upbraid the chief for the 
treachery of his tribe four years before. He 
passed the village of the Quinipissas without 
landing. 

On the 9th day of April, Tonty and his party 
came to the sea. Four years before on this same 
day La Salle had raised the cross and the arms 
of France and had taken possession of the Great 
Valley for the king. But now, though he had 
had nearly two years to reach the mouth of the 
river by sea, La Salle was nowhere to be found. 
Nor was there any sign that he and his ships and 
men had been there. Tonty's anxiety deep- 
ened as he searched in vain the neighboring 
channels. He made up two exploring parties 
and sent one east and one west along the coast 
of the Gulf. Throwing together a rude fort on 
an island near the mouth, he waited. When 
three days were gone both parties had returned. 
They had explored more than half a hundred 

216 



THE LOST CHIEF 

leagues of the coast, and had come back because 
their drinking-water was gone. They had seen 
nothing but wet shores and the salty sea. No- 
where was there sign of the lost chief. 

Up in Canada, meanwhile. Governor Denon- 
ville was waiting for Tonty to come and confer 
with him about the Iroquois raid. Tonty took 
counsel with his men. One thing more might 
be done. They were a considerable party — a 
third of a hundred — and they had stout canoes. 
Why not skirt the coast of the Gulf, round the 
point of Florida, pass up the eastern shore of 
the continent as far as New York, and thence 
across to Canada and the waiting governor? It 
was a bold plan, but a reckless one, and Tonty 
did not insist upon it. 

With heavy heart he finally began the ascent 
of the river. The wind and waves had wrought 
havoc with the arms of the king which La Salle 
had raised, and Tonty replaced them. In a hole 
in a tree he left a letter for La Salle, and then 
went on to the village of the Quinipissas. These 
Indians were a chastened people, for the years 
had not wiped from their memory the punish- 
ment that La Salle had put upon them for their 
treachery. Now they sued humbly for peace, 

217 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

and Tonty granted it. Then he wrote another 
letter to his leader and gave it to the chief of the 
Quinipissas, telling him to deliver it to La Salle 
if he ever came into this region. The Indian 
clung to this letter like a sacred treasure and 
thirteen years later gave it proudly into the 
hands of a white chief who had come up the 
river from the sea. 

Tonty and his companions continued their 
journey. When they reached the mouth of the 
Arkansas some of the men asked leave to plant 
a new French settlement on a tract of land 
which La Salle had granted to Tonty four years 
before. Tonty was willing; and so Jean Couture 
and several others pitched camp on the shore of 
the Arkansas River near its mouth and watched 
their comrades pass on without them. Then 
they built a log house with a palisade of stakes 
around it. It was a small settlement, but it was 
of strange importance in the story of the next 
three years. 

On the 24th of June the disappointed search 
party was welcomed on the high rock of Fort 
St. Louis. But Tonty could not tarry at the 
fort. Taking with him two Illinois chiefs, he 
went on up the river and across the Great 

218 



THE LOST CHIEF 

Lakes to where Denonville waited to talk with 
him. 

Plans for a great gathering of the enemies of 
the Iroquois took form rapidly. The two Illinois 
chiefs, who came back from the visit to the 
Canadian governor late in 1686, were full of 
tales that roused their people. Runners, sent 
out from the fort, informed all the tribes that 
war was to be waged in the spring and asked 
them to join Tonty at Fort St. Louis. 

When April of 1687 came, the fort on the rock 
saw the smoke rise from many fires, for Tonty 
was giving a dog-feast for his Indian warriors. 
Illinois, Shawnees, Mohegans, and Miamis 
gathered for the fray. La Forest had already 
set out with a band of Frenchmen; Durantaye 
and Du Luth were gathering together their war- 
riors over on the Lake; and in the latter part of 
April, Bellefontaine, left with twenty men in 
charge of the fort, watched Tonty with sixteen 
Frenchmen and the band of Indian braves de- 
part for the war in the far East.' 



XXV 

NEWS FROM LA SALLE 

Spring and summer passed quietly along the 
Illinois River. Tonty and his combined army 
had not yet returned from the Iroquois war; and 
those who had stayed at home to protect the 
fort and villages found no invaders to molest 
them. Boisrondet, the commissary of the fort, 
was busy with the fields of the French. The In- 
dians, too, planted their crops and tended them. 
The braves visited the little garrison from time 
to time, hunted and fished some, gambled with 
cherry-stones more, and basked in the sun most 
of all. 

September was half gone, and still there was 
nothing to b reak the monotony . The fourteenth 
of the month was Sunday, and perhaps in the 
fort the black-robed Father Allouez, sick and 
confined to his room, took some notice of the 
day. But to the Indians, one day was like an- 
other. It so happened that a group of them 
early in the afternoon were in the fields down 
the river from the fort. Suddenly one of their 

220 



NEWS FROM LA SALLE 

number, a Shawnee named Turp in, looking off 
to the stream sparkling In the sun, saw an In- 
dian dugout approaching. In a moment he was 
at the water's edge scanning with eager eyes the 
occupants of the bark. They came nearer, were 
even with him, passed by upstream; but he 
recognized no one of them. There was a strap- 
ping big Frenchman, two men in priestly robes, 
two other white men, and several strange In- 
dians. Where had these men come from? No 
one knew of their going down the river. 

When the strangers had passed, Turpin 
slipped across the fields and again came to the 
bank of the river higher up. This time the men 
in the dugout called to him. They were of the 
party of La Salle, they said. For a while the 
Indian studied them Intently. Then catching 
the name La Salle, he was oif on the dead run 
to the fort. Up the steep pathway he went as if 
on wings, and burst Into the palisaded entrance 
with the cry that La Salle was coming. 

Out of the inclosure with a bound jumped 
Bolsrondet and the blacksmith, and down the 
side of the rock and around the base to the bank 
of the river they went faster than the Indian 
had come. Another Frenchman and a group of 

221 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Indians were ahead of them, however, and were 
already leading the white men to the fort. Full 
of surprise and joy Boisrondet and his comrade 
embraced the strangers, who were five in num- 
ber. The quick eye of Boisrondet ran over all of 
them, then looked back toward the river. 

"But where is La Salle?" he asked. Of the 
two men who replied, one was a heavy-built, 
honest-faced man, the other a priest. The priest 
was the Abbe Cavelier, an own brother of La 
Salle; his companion was Henri Joutel, a 
trusted follower of the lost chief. La Salle, 
they said, had accompanied them part of the 
way and had left them at a place about forty 
leagues from the village of the Cenis; and when 
he left them he was in good health. 

If there was anything peculiar about their 
reply Boisrondet did not at the time seriously 
note it. Nor did he notice the silence of the 
gray-robed friar who stood beside the speakers. 
He was too full of joy at news from his chief, 
and listened with ready ear as they added that 
they had orders from La Salle to go on to 
France to report his travels and bring aid. 

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when, 
after their exchange of greetings, the whole 

222 



NEWS FROM LA SALLE 

party climbed to the fort towering high above 
the landscape. Volleys from the guns of the 
garrison saluted them, and the commander, 
Belief ontaine, came forward to greet them. 
Then the strangers crossed over to the little 
chapel to give thanks on that September Sab- 
bath for their safe arrival among friends. 

Father AUouez, who lay sick in his room, re- 
ceived with alarm the news that a party of La 
Salle's men had arrived at the fort. Was La 
Salle among them ? With great relief he learned 
that he was not. AUouez sent word that he 
would like to talk with some of the party; 
and so La Salle's brother and the quiet Father 
Douay, together with Joutel, entered the sick 
man's chamber. 

At first they talked of other matters — of 
affairs in far-away France, of the stamping-out 
of the heresy of Calvinism, and of the twenty 
years' truce with the Emperor. At length the 
sick man asked them of La Salle. As they had 
told Boisrondet, so they now told AUouez that 
La Salle was well when they parted from him — 
and they added that he also had planned to 
come to the Illinois country and perhaps would 
be there before long. Thereupon the look of 

223 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

foreboding deepened upon the face of Allouez. 
As they left the sick-room the three men asked 
themselves why the priest seemed so displeased 
at the coming of La Salle. 

The arrival of the five men of La Salle's party 
was a welcome break in the monotony of life in 
the little colony; and glad would the garrison 
and the Indians alike have been to have had 
them stay. But they were anxious to go on — 
in particular the Abbe Cavelier, who seemed to 
be impatient of delay. He asked Boisrondet for 
a canoe and men to take them on to the Lakes, 
for the Arkansas guides who had brought them 
up the river must now return with their canoe 
to their own people. Yes, Boisrondet replied, 
he had a canoe, but the difficulty was to find 
capable men for guides. On Wednesday, how- 
ever, three canoe-men arrived from Mackinac 
and agreed to conduct the party to that post. 

Four days after their arrival at the fort the 
visitors were again on their way to the Lakes 
and Canada with Shawnee Indians to carry 
their provisions. When they reached the Lake 
of the Illinois the waves were tossing to an 
alarming height and storms kept them on 
shore for a week or more. At last, giving up in 

224 



NEWS FROM LA SALLE 

despair, they turned about, buried their sup- 
plies in a cache, and walked across country 
back to the fort. 

Already the Indian warriors from Tonty's 
party were straggling back full of the good news 
of an overwhelming defeat of the Seneca Nation 
of Iroquois. Tonty, with his Frenchmen and 
their Indian allies, had taken a valiant part in 
the great raid in July, and now was on his way 
homeward. The colony took on new life, as with 
each incoming group the joy of the Indians 
increased. 

At length, on October 27, Tonty himself came 
down the river and climbed the path to Fort St. 
Louis. Guns roared, the men at the fort crowded 
around him, and admiring Indians hung upon 
his footsteps. But these five strangers ! Tonty's 
eyes fell upon the long robe and the priestly 
face of the Abbe Cavelier. La Salle's brother 
here in his fort ! Well did he know the face, and 
little did he like its owner; but he had been 
one of the lost party. What, then, of La Salle .^ 
Quick and intense came the questions from the 
iron-handed commander. 

Again the Abbe and Joutel told their story. 
La Salle had come from the far southwest coast 

225 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

with them almost to the villages of the Cenis 
Indians who lived west of the Arkansas, and 
there he had left them; and when he left them he 
was in good health. Beside the little group 
stood Father Anastasius Douay with silent lips. 
Nor did the mariner Tessier or young Cavelier, 
the nephew of La Salle and the Abbe, add any- 
thing to the story. 

Tonty paid small heed to their silence; for in 
his mind was the one great thought that La 
Salle was alive and might reach the fort at any 
time. Four years before, his beloved leader had 
gone from the fort on the Illinois to Canada and 
across to France; and three years before, he had 
sailed from France for the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi. In all that time, alternating between 
hope and the gloomy despair which lately had 
so often fallen upon his soul, Tonty had waited 
hoping each day for news from his lost chief. 
Now it had come. 

Little had Tonty liked the priestly elder 
brother of his friend ; for in the days of the past 
the Abbe Cavelier, with his captious ways, his 
complainings and his intrigues, had been a 
source of much annoyance to La Salle. But let 
such things be forgotten now, for the man came 

226 



NEWS FROM LA SALLE 

bringing news — good news of the lost chief. 
And so within the walls of Fort St. Louis, in the 
far wilderness of this Indian country, Tonty 
listened as the Abbe and Joutel told the story 
he so long had waited to hear, the tale of the 
adventures of three anxious and exciting years. 



XXVI 

AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE 

On the 24th day of July, three long years 
before, these five weather-worn men and their 
comrades had seen the shores of France fade 
slowly from their sight. Out of the harbor of 
Rochelle had sailed that summer day twenty- 
four ships. Twenty of the number soon drew 
away from the rest and turned their bows 
toward the mouth of the St. Lawrence and New 
France; the other four sailed on alone. 

On board the four ships were near three hun- 
dred souls, embarking on a voyage no one of 
them had made before. One of the boats, the 
Joly, a ship of war, carried thirty-odd pieces 
of cannon. But it carried also more precious 
cargo. Monsieur Beaujeu, a proud man and 
bold, was its captain ; and with him, as leader of 
the colony that thus fared forth to the glory of 
the King of France, was Robert Cavelier, Sieur 
de La Salle. Restless and ambitious as ever, he 
now felt under his feet the roll of decks which 
the king had given him with godspeed to find 

228 



AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE 

the mouth of the Mississippi River and plant 
there a settlement that would be the begin- 
ning of a great new empire in the heart of the 
American wilderness. 

The King of France had caught a glimpse of 
La Salle's vision of the future of the Great 
Valley. He had listened, too, while La Salle had 
whispered into his eager ears the story of how 
the hated Spaniards, clinging these many years 
to the rich lands of Mexico, would fall before 
the attacks of the French, aided by the hordes 
of Indians whom they would recruit from the 
colony about Fort St. Louis and from the lower 
Mississippi Valley. 

In the four ships were a hundred soldiers ; and 
since colonies have need of such, there were car- 
penters and tool-makers and bakers and stone- 
masons and engineers. There were also priests 
and friars — among others La Salle's brother, 
the Abbe Cavelier,. and Father Anastasius 
Douay. On board one of the ships was the 
energetic figure of Father Membre, who was no 
stranger to the Great Valley of the Mississippi. 
He had entered it with La Salle, and later had 
hardly struggled out of it with his friend of the 
iron hand after the Iroquois raid. He had come 

229 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

back with the gallant party that paddled down 
the length of the valley to the sea, and had been 
the one to carry news of the voyage to Canada 
and to France. Still did he cling to the side of 
his leader, stanch friend that he was. 

Born in the same town of Rouen with La 
Salle was a man named Henri Joutel. When a 
mere boy he joined the army, and after serving 
about sixteen years he had come back to his 
native town in time to join others who were 
shipping with their townsman for the trip 
across the sea. Last of all, these four ships held 
a handful of women and girls who were ready 
to try the perils of the sea^and the fearsome 
dangers of a strange land. 

Thus they had sailed, a company of colon- 
ists of all classes and descriptions — good men 
and bad, brave men and weak, workers and 
drones, gentlemen and stout-hearted peasants, 
debauched nobles and the riffraff of seaport 
towns ; men who took their load and endured 
through hardship, sickness, and despair; and 
men whom Joutel declared were fit only to eat 
part of the provisions. 

Never had the unconquerable spirit of La 
Salle met such stubborn blows as now. In the 

230 



AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE 

first place the arrangements of the voyage were 
well-nigh fatal to success, for the company had 
two heads, each one a man accustomed to com- 
mand alone and impatient of any other author- 
ity. Beaujeu, an old naval officer who was the 
captain of the fleet, saw little of greatness in 
La Salle, and looked upon him as a dreamer if 
not a fanatic. La Salle, leader of the colony, 
with authority to determine the route to be 
taken, looked with distrust upon Beaujeu, held 
his own counsel about his plans, and regarded 
the captain as his enemy and the chief obsta- 
cle to the successful outcome of his mission. 
Before ever the ships set sail these two men 
had their quarrels, and on the open seas it was 
no better. 

Years of bitter experiences, of wilderness 
hardships, of daily and nightly perils, of dis- 
appointments and losses, had hardened the 
temper of La Salle's will ; and these years had 
not softened a certain coldness and harshness of 
manner that lost him many friends. Suspicion 
and doubt of his fellows deepened in his heart 
with every turn of his wheel of fortune. With 
all his remarkable power over the Indians, he 
constantly failed to understand and make him- 

231 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

self loved by the men of his own race over 
whom he was in command. Naturally with his 
mongrel company of voyagers things went 
sadly wrong. No one appreciated better than 
Tonty, as he listened to the tale of the Abbe 
and Joutel, how adventures and trials such as 
the party were bound to meet would try each 
man and show him for a true man, a knave, or 
a weakling. 

At the island of Santo Domingo the Joly 
made port and lay to, waiting for the balance of 
the fleet which had fallen behind. There were 
fifty sick in the company, among them La 
Salle. But there was much to be done on shore. 
While walking one day with Joutel in the 
streets of the little town of Petit Gouave, La 
Salle was overcome by a sudden weakness and 
sank to the ground. Joutel took him as soon as 
possible to a house which had been temporarily 
rented by the Duhaut brothers, two members 
of La Salle's company. Before he was himself 
again one of the Duhauts rashly told him that 
Spanish buccaneers had captured one of the four 
ships, and straightway his sickness returned. 
Joutel and the Abbe said little to Tonty of the 
elder of these Duhauts, but in their own minds 

232 



AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE 

they thought of him with a hate that had no 
basis in the tale they were telling. 

For many weeks La Salle and his voyagers 
were delayed at Santo Domingo, gathering 
supplies for the rest of the voyage. More of the 
company fell ill; and some, fearful of coming 
dangers, deserted. At last they got away late 
in November and sailed west along the southern 
coast of Cuba. Soon they had passed the long 
island and turned the prows of their ships 
toward the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Two or three days before the end of the year 
1684, they sighted land. Thinking that they 
were near the Bay of Appalache, they sailed 
westward, in cold wind and rain and fog, hoping 
each day to find the mouth of the Great River. 
Sometimes they landed men to explore a river 
mouth or lagoon. Once, on the 6th of January, 
they came to what appeared to be the mouth of 
a bay with an island in the midst of it, but La 
Salle, still convinced that the Mississippi was 
far to the west, pushed on along the coast. As 
January drew to a close they found the shore 
line trending more and more to the south, and 
even La Salle began to think they had gone 
beyond the river they were seeking. 

233 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

At length they landed on the shore of a bay- 
where a river ran down to the Gulf, and the per- 
plexed leader of the wandering colony made 
up his mind that they had found the western 
mouth of the Mississippi. One of the ships, 
coming into the bay under the ill-management 
of the pilot, ran aground and broke apart. In 
despair La Salle put his men to saving the 
cargo. Under great difficulties provisions and 
ammunition were rescued from the fated ship 
and piled on the lonely shore. Through the long 
night that followed unfriendly Indians prowled 
about eager for plunder, and sentinels walked 
up and down upon the sand keeping watch 
among the precious boxes and barrels, while the 
miserable band of colonists tried to get sleep. 

Discouraging as was this beginning, greater 
misfortunes were not slow in coming to the 
colony. La Salle's nephew, Moranget, hot- 
headed and unwise, visited an Indian village 
with some of the men to trade and to look for 
stolen property; and when they took leave they 
made off with Indian blankets and canoes. 
Upon their return they camped at night, their 
sentinel slept, and the Indians crept upon them. 
War-whoops rose in the air and into the group 

234 



AN ILL-STARRED VOYAGE 

of sleeping white men by the smouldering fire 
came a volley of arrows, killing two of the com- 
pany. Moranget finally succeeded in reaching 
the camp by the shore with the ill news upon his 
lips and an arrow in his shoulder. 

No man knew better than La Salle the evil 
results that would surely follow such relations 
with the Indians; but there was no mending 
matters now. Ill luck blew in every wind; what 
with keeping constant watch upon prowling 
Indians, fighting prairie fires that threatened to 
reach the provisions and gunpowder, and bury- 
ing along the sandy shore those of the com- 
pany who fell sick and died, the colony of La 
Salle was making wretched progress. 

Leaving a hundred and thirty of the com- 
pany in charge of Joutel, La Salle with a hand- 
ful of men went off to explore. He came back 
with his own stubborn mind convinced that he 
was not so near the Mississippi as he had sup- 
posed. Beyond a doubt he and all of his men 
were lost. 

Beaiijeu and a part of the company had 
already sailed away; they were returning to 
France to tell their friends that La Salle was 
landed on the shore of the Gulf amid hostile 

235 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Indians and with no certain knowledge of where 
he was. As a matter of fact La Salle had passed 
the mouth of the Mississippi by nearly four 
hundred miles and was camped on the shores of 
what is now Matagorda Bay in Texas. 



r 



XXVII 

HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

Somewhere off to the east the Mississippi 
River was running down through the Great 
Valley to the sea ; and La Salle's determination 
to find it deepened with his discouragements. 
But first they must make the location near the 
sea habitable as a supply station for further 
exploration. To that end a rude fort had been 
erected near where they had landed, and Joutel 
with part of the company had been left in 
charge while La Salle explored the neigh- 
borhood. Soon he came upon a site a little 
farther up the river which seemed more suit- 
able for a permanent fort; and so he sent back 
word to Joutel to square timbers ready for the 
new building and join him later at this upper 
location. 

In these widespread sandy plains of the 
Southland there was no high rock like that of 
Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. But there was a 
rising hill near the river, and here with his own 
hands La Salle laid the outline of the fort and 

237 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

directed its construction. The new fort took 
rapid shape; and La Salle, after his favorite 
saint, called it Fort St. Louis, and he named the 
inlet where they landed the Bay of St. Louis. 

Out of squared timbers the men built a large 
dwelling and divided it into apartments. 
Around this they built a palisade, and set up 
the eight precious cannon. It was a pleasant 
location. The river bathed the foot of the hill 
on the north and northeast and ran on down to 
the bay. Across the river was a marshy tract 
where birds innumerable sang in their season. 
To the west and southwest, crossed and re- 
crossed by herds of shaggy buffalo, the plains 
stretched as far as the eye could reach. 

Here and there were little groups of trees, 
including many which remained green the whole 
year through. From a distance these bits of 
foliage gave to the lonely colonists the pleasing 
picture of the groves about country homes in 
far-away France. In their imaginings they 
seemed to see the country peopled by white set- 
tlers instead of the Indians who prowled about 
the new settlement and sometimes fell upon 
their wandering hunters. 

The colony had grown steadily smaller: 

238 



HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

during the summer more than thirty had died 
of sickness; some had been killed by the 
Indians; and a few had deserted. Among the 
sick was the Abbe Cavelier. La Salle, con- 
sumed with the desire to hunt for his lost river, 
only waited for his brother to recover suffi- 
ciently to go with him. By fall the priest was 
well, the fort was established, and La Salle 
made ready to go. But before he departed he 
called Joutel aside and gave him charge of the 
colony, with careful instructions not to receive 
any of the exploring party if they should come 
back unless they brought a letter from La Salle 
himself containing the password: "In the name 
of the very blessed Trinity." Then as Octo- 
ber of 1685 drew to a close. La Salle, with his 
brother and a goodly number of men, amid the 
firing of cannon, set out along the bay with all 
of the canoes and the bark La Belle to seek 
what they might find to the eastward. 

Joutel, who had been left with thirty-four 
persons, — men, women, and children, — kept 
them all busy. Some he sent out as hunters and 
others he put to carrying wood and completing 
their dwellings and storehouses. Now and then 
Indians were seen, but they did not come near 

239 

/ 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

the fort. For their better protection Joutel 
divided the night into watches and with great 
care posted sentinels — a duty which even the 
women shared. Weeks passed and the new 
year came upon them; and still La Salle had 
not returned. 

One evening in the middle of January the 
men and women, in from their work, were 
gathered within the palisaded house on the hill, 
when suddenly the sentinel cried out to them 
that he heard a voice calling from the river. In 
great haste the men ran out of the house and 
down to the shore. Out on the water they could 
see the outlines of a canoe and in it one lone 
man, who called out at the twinkling lights of 
the settlement, "Dominick!" 

Domlnick was the younger of the Duhaut 
brothers; and as the voyager neared the shore 
the men from the fort saw that he was the elder 
Duhaut who had set out with La Salle nearly 
three months before. Now he was returning 
alone, and so Joutel questioned him closely. 
Had he a letter from La Salle .^ No. Joutel 
pondered. "Let no one come back to the fort 
unless he brings a letter from me with the pass- 
word in it," La Salle had said in parting. Should 

240 



HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

he turn Duhaut away again into the wilderness, 
or should he throw him into irons until the 
return of the leader? It was a puzzling pre- 
dicament which confronted Joutel; but at 
least he might listen to the man's story. When 
Duhaut had finally told of his adventures, 
the good-hearted Joutel saw nothing wrong 
in taking him in again as a member of the 
garrison. 

La Salle, so said Duhaut, had coasted along 
the shore with canoes and the Belle for many 
days. Once he sent out a party of six to recon- 
noiter the land. They did not return, and later 
a search party found their dead bodies along 
the shore where Indians had massacred them. 
La Salle was discouraged but not completely 
disheartened. Gathering meat on shore and 
drying it for preservation, he loaded it with 
other provisions on board the Belle, and ordered 
a portion of his men to stay on the ship and 
remain out in the bay until his return. Then 
with twenty men he went ashore, sunk his 
canoes, and trailed inland — still hoping to 
come upon the Great River. 

The elder Duhaut was one of this exploring 
party, as was also Moranget, who had orders 

241 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

from La Salle to bring up the rear. Now it so 
happened that Duhaut's knapsack and shoes 
were in bad condition and he stopped to mend 
them. Moranget, coming up, urged him to 
move on; and Duhaut in turn asked Moran- 
get to wait for him. Moranget, however, would 
not stop, but passed on with the rest of the com- 
pany. Finally when Duhaut looked up he found 
no one in sight. With hurried steps he followed 
in the direction his companions had taken. 
When night fell he was still alone in a plain full 
of weeds and buffalo tracks, but with no sign of 
men. He fired his gun, but nothing save the 
echo answered the report. At last he lay down 
under the open sky to sleep. 

When morning came Duhaut rose with fresh 
hope and fired again several times; but there 
was no answer. He was lost. All that day and 
night he remained near the same spot, hoping 
that some of the party might return to find him. 
At length, when no one came, he determined to 
hunt his way back to Fort St. Louis. Leagues 
of wilderness lay between him and the fort, 
and he well knew that in every clump of trees 
might lurk hostile Indians. 

Each day he lay in fear and suspense, hiding 

242 



HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

under logs and underbrush; and^y night he 
stumbled on toward home. His provisions gave 
out and he must kill game for food — each time 
with difficulty and in great danger of discovery 
by the Indians. Weeks of this nightly wander- 
ing passed before he finally reached the place 
where La Salle had sunk the canoes. Labori- 
ously he raised one of the boats from its watery 
bed, and in it paddled on down the bay. When 
the wind blew he hoisted his shirt for a sail. At 
last he reached the fort after he had been a 
month on the way, miraculously escaping death 
from Indian foes and suffering almost incred- 
ible hardships. Joutel could not find it in his 
heart to refuse to accept the man. He con- 
tented himself with watching him carefully for 
a few days, but saw nothing to arouse suspicion 
or displeasure. 

A favorite post of Joutel's was the housetop, 
from which he could see in every direction. It 
was from this lookout, about two months after 
Duhaut's return, that he saw, far off across the 
plains, a little group of men. Hurrying down he 
gathered a few of his men, put them under 
arms, and advanced to see who the newcomers 
might be. They were La Salle, the Abbe, 

243 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Moranget, and five or six others. Their clothes 
were ragged and worn beyond description. 
Scarcely a hat was there in the party or a whole 
garment, and the Abbe's cassock hung upon 
him in tatters. 

La Salle had sent some of his men to find the 
Belle. On the day after La Salle's return, they, 
too, came to the fort and reported that they 
could not find the ship. Later it was learned 
that the bark had run aground and the crew had 
been forced to desert it. Thus the last one of the 
ships was gone and with it the hope of going to 
the West Indies for aid. 

La Salle had traveled far, but he had found 
little to encourage him in his journeyings. Yet 
like a will-o'-the-wisp the desire to find the 
river would not let him rest. Hardly a month 
did he tarry at the fort. It was during this 
month that Tonty was at the mouth of the 
Mississippi hunting with heavy heart for his 
lost leader. 

By the end of April, La Salle again ventured 
forth with a score of men, this time on foot. 
Again the Abbe and Moranget were of the 
party; and with them were Dominick Duhaut, 
a German buccaneer named Hiens, a surgeon, 

244 



HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

and a dozen others fitted by constitution for 
hardship and danger. 

Once more Joutel was left in charge of the 
settlement which thrived under his hand. All 
about the house he planted grain and vege- 
tables and melons. He repaired the buildings, 
and here and there trained climbing vines. 
Father Membre kept a vegetable garden of 
his own. Game being fairly plentiful, Gabriel 
Barbier was sent out as head of the hunting- 
parties, and some of the women and girls went 
along to help dress the game. At the fort there 
was target practice, and prizes were offered 
for marksmanship. Being somewhat limited 
in ammunition, Joutel instructed those who 
dressed the game on the hunt to search for the 
bullet; and often the same ball was used to 
bring down several animals. 

Sometimes the hunters had encounters with 
the Indians and once several of the men were 
wounded; yet withal they were little molested. 
When in the house at night the company kept 
in good cheer with music and dancing. Thus 
the summer of 1686 passed comfortably enough. 

Not until August did La Salle come back ; and 
when he did come it was with only a fragment 

245 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

of his band. A part of his men had become 
separated from the rest and never returned — 
and the younger Duhaut was one of the lost. 
This time La Salle brought back with him five 
horses, and reported that he had traveled to the 
northeast as far as the villages of the Cenis 
Indians. But he had not found the Mississippi 
River. 

The undaunted leader now made plans to 
gather a party which, with provisions and sup- 
plies loaded on the five horses he had bought, 
would make for Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois 
River, where Tonty and his men were waiting, 
and thence go on to Canada and France to bring 
aid and supplies to the colony on the Gulf. He 
asked Joutel to join the party, while Gabriel 
Barbier was put in charge of the fort and the 
men and women who remained there. 

He was a man with a story — this Gabriel 
Barbier. About eight years before, while in the 
service of La Salle, he had been persuaded by 
other men to desert with them. La Salle went 
on out to the Illinois country, built Fort 
Crevecoeur, and in the spring of 1680 went back 
to Canada for supplies. That summer Barbier 
came to him begging to be taken back, and La 

246 



HUNTING THE MISSISSIPPI 

Salle consented. He had gone down the Great 
River with his leader in 1682 and had been a 
valuable member of the party; and now, after 
being further tried by the experiences of the 
expedition to the Gulf, he was placed by his 
leader in a position of trust and power. 



XXVIII 

FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS 

There were seventeen men who set out on 
foot, early in January, 1687, to travel from 
Fort St. Louis on the Gulf of Mexico to the 
other Fort St. Louis on the Illinois River — a 
journey of over a thousand miles. They knew 
no trails which they could follow, nor were 
there bridges on which to cross the rivers; and 
to a large extent they must gather their food 
as they went. They must sleep where night 
found them; and they must trust the Indians 
whose country they were crossing to treat them 
as friends and give them guidance upon the 
way, for as far as they knew there was no white 
man in all the distance between the two forts. 
Yet forth they went bravely — La Salle and his 
brother and two nephews (Moranget and the 
young Cavelier), Joutel, and Father Douay, 
Duhaut the elder and his man L'Archeveque, 
whom he had picked up at the isle of Santo 
Domingo, Liotot the surgeon and Hiens the 
buccaneer, a young boy named Pierre Talon 

248 



FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS 

whom La Salle planned to leave at the Cenis 
village to learn their language, and a half- 
dozen others. 

Father Membre, full of grief, remained with 
Barbier and the party at the fort and saw the 
slender band of explorers start off across the 
plains, their five horses loaded with supplies 
for a long and arduous journey. It being win- 
ter in the Southland, rains came upon them 
frequently and swamps and swollen streams 
blocked their way. Sometimes for days they 
walked drearily along the wet banks of rivers, 
looking for a place to ford. Occasionally they 
used logs to cross upon, but finally they found 
the streams so wide that they stopped and made 
portable boats out of buffalo hides. 

There was no lack of game; and the broad 
paths of the buffalo often served as trails. Time 
and again the party came across Indians, with 
whom La Salle almost invariably made friends. 
Sometimes he visited their hunting-camps and 
smoked with them the pipe of peace. At other 
times he called them into his own camp to 
smoke and eat, and then sent them away happy 
with presents. They came upon Indian villages 
with round huts like French ovens, and stopped 

249 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

to trade beads and hatchets for a horse or provi- 
sions or deer-hide for fresh moccasins, Hstening 
meantime to the tales of Indian wars or of the 
Spaniards from whom their horses first came. 
They crossed the rivers now known as the 
Colorado and the Brazos and drew near to the 
Trinity River. 

Many were the adventures which Joutel and 
the Abbe related to Tonty at Fort St. Louis on 
the Illinois. Before they reached the Cenis vil- 
lage, they said, La Salle separated from them, 
but intended to follow them soon. He was in 
good health when he left them. Without their 
leader they had pushed on to the village of the 
Cenis, and from there they went with guides to 
the Arkansas towns. 

It was the 24th of July, 1687, three years to a 
day since they had sailed out of the harbor of 
Rochelle, when they came at last to a village 
on the shore of the Arkansas and saw on the 
river bank a house built like the houses of 
Frenchmen and the blessed cross rising straight 
to the sky. Out of the house on the shore came 
running two white men to welcome them. 
They were Jean Couture and De Launay, two 
of the men whom Tonty had left there on his 

250 



FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS 

return from his trip to the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi the year before. At the village the Arkan- 
sas danced the calumet dance before the Abbe. 
Later Couture accompanied the five men as far 
as the village of the Kappas, from which place, 
with Arkansas guides and an Indian canoe, they 
had come up the Mississippi and the Illinois 
and reached Fort St. Louis in the month of 
September. 

., Such in brief was the tale that the two men 
— brother and companion of La Salle — told 
to Tonty on the high rock of Fort St. Louis. 
The Man with the Iron Hand listened to each 
word with intense feeling. Nearly ten years 
before he had cast his lot with La Salle. With 
him and for him he had literally hungered and 
suffered and bled. He had given what he had 
of worldly goods, and his time, his strength, his 
whole self he had thrown into the balance to 
uphold the plans of his chief. He knew him as 
few men did — he knew his faults as well as his 
great abilities — and he loved him. Often he 
had remonstrated with him over some actions 
or methods that lost him favor with his men; 
but he also saw the breadth and power of his 
leader's vision. 

25 1 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Time and again he had thought his friend 
lost and dead — as he had been told so stoutly 
in the days long before when he lived almost 
alone in the Kaskaskia village. In despair he 
had hunted the Great River to its mouth — 
little dreaming, when he gave the letter into the 
hands of the Quinipissa chief, that La Salle was 
in the wilderness more than a hundred leagues 
to the west. 

But now had come news that La Salle was 
alive and in good health and perhaps coming 
fast upon the heels of his men to the citadel on 
the high rock where Tonty and Boisrondet and 
other faithful comrades had waited and dreamed 
of his coming for four long years. Yes, he was 
on his way to the Illinois country whose In- 
dians never forgot him, but loved him as one 
of their own great chiefs. He was coming back 
to the Kaskaskias whose home he had restored, 
to the Shawnees whom he had gathered at the 
foot of his great fort, to the Miamis whose chief 
he had raised from the dead in his own per- 
son. It was like the coming back from the 
dead to Tonty, too, after these years of de- 
spair. And so, in his joy, he paid little heed to 
the quiet friar in the gray robe or the mariner 

252 



FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS 

Teissier, who moved so silently among the 
buildings of the fort. 

The entire colony on the Illinois River — 
Indian villages and French garrison alike — 
buzzed with excitement that winter. Nothing 
was too good for the men of La Salle's party. 
Around the fires in the quarters of the French, 
men gathered to sing songs and tell stories of 
adventure and battle and strange countries, 
and to talk of him who was coming. 

Especially among the Indian lodges was 
there great good cheer, for the white father was 
alive and on his way back to their villages and 
camp-fires. There was joy, too, among the 
tribes over the raids the Illinois were making. 
It seemed as though the Iroquois scourge was 
being driven out of the valley for good, as band 
after band of Illinois left the lodges to the 
women and old men and struck out upon the 
trail of the Iroquois. Scalps they brought home 
and captives, and many were the burnings 
by which^ they paid interest upon their debt 
of vengeance. With Tonty in New York they 
had laid waste the Iroquois fields, and now their 
good fortune still continued. So white men and 
red together were glad. 

2S3 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

The five men who had come to the fort in 
September were anxious to get on with their 
journey, and Tonty promised them all the aid 
in his power as soon as the spring should make 
travel possible. But with all their hurry, there 
was one who seemed even more full of anxiety. 
The priest AUouez, who had recovered from his 
sickness, did not lose his apparent dread of the 
approach of La Salle. Spring, coming on apace, 
increased his scarcely concealed restlessness; 
and when in March the way became somewhat 
open, the black-robed Jesuit was the first to slip 
out of the fort and up the valley to his friends 
on the Lake. 

Then the Abbe with his four companions 
made ready to go. But they must have means 
to buy food and transportation on their way to 
Canada and France. So the Abbe showed to 
Tonty a letter from La Salle, asking Tonty 
to furnish his brother, the Abbe, with money or 
furs. Tonty, with the greatest content, sup- 
plied them with what they needed for the jour- 
ney, and late in March the five men of La Salle's 
party, with guides to accompany them, left the 
high rock on their long homeward journey. 

After bidding the five men farewell, Tonty 

254 



FROM THE GULF TO THE ILLINOIS 

turned his attention to the fort which must be 
put in readiness for the coming of the master. 
Month after month passed and he hoped each 
day to see a canoe or canoes cutting the water 
of the IlHnois far downstream. Summer went 
by and no La Salle. September came without 
bringing the leader. La Salle was now a year 
behind his advance party. But one day there 
did appear a canoe on the stream below the 
fort, and in it were a Frenchman and two 
Indians. Tonty full of excitement made haste 
to welcome them. It was not La Salle : it was 
Tonty's man Couture from the Arkansas post. 
But surely he came with news from La Salle; 
and so quick questions leaped at Couture al- 
most before he was in sound of Tonty 's voice. 



XXIX 

WHEN HE LEFT THEM 

Couture did, indeed, bring news concerning 
La Salle. Within the palisaded walls that 
crowned the rock of Fort St. Louis, the Man 
with the Iron Hand now listened to a story that 
hardened his soul with anger and despair. The 
Abbe and Joutel had told him much, but they 
had not told him all. From what Couture said 
it became evident that when the Abbe and his 
party reached the post on the Arkansas, they 
had told some things which they did not after- 
wards relate at Fort St. Louis. Thus through 
Couture's account, pieced out by other details 
learned later, Tonty came to know the real 
heart of the story which the Abbe and Joutel 
had only told in half. 

The thread of the hidden tale ran back to 
the beginning of the voyage from France. On 
the way across the sea there was a growing dis- 
content among the men, which ripened into 
intrigue when they landed. While Joutel with 
part of the colony was guarding the supplies on 

256 



WHEN HE LEFT THEM 

the shore and squaring timbers to be used in the 
fort upstream, a confession by one of the men 
enabled him to foil a conspiracy to kill Le 
Gros, who guarded the storehouse, and himself 
steal arms and supplies from the storehouse and 
desert to the wilds. Joutel turned the men over 
to La Salle, but the incident did not make suf- 
ficient impression upon his own unsuspicious 
nature. When some months later Duhaut came 
back alone from La Salle's first expedition, 
Joutel contented himself with watching him 
narrowly for a few days. When La Salle set out 
on his second expedition, Duhaut remained be- 
hind with the men at the fort. 

As the weeks of La Salle's absence length- 
ened into months, discontent spread among the 
members of the colony at the fort. Probably 
La Salle was lost; at all events, it did not look 
as if he were coming back. 'Little knots of men 
drew off together to talk of their wrongs. Why 
not desert La Salle and take matters into their 
own hands ? Duhaut passed among the discon- 
tented with words of encouragement : under his 
management things would be different. Having 
staked considerable wealth in the enterprise of 
La Salle's colony, Duhaut had grumbled much 

257 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

at the ill fortune that had come upon them; but 
in spite of all the losses of the colony he had 
managed to keep a large supply of goods, — 
knives, hatchets, cloth for garments and for In- 
dian trade, — and these and many other pos- 
sessions he now promised to divide among those 
who would follow him. 

Joutel, learning of the mutterings of the men 
and the intrigues of Duhaut, called the con- 
spirator before him with sharp words. Later he 
felt that he would have done better service to 
La Salle if he had put Duhaut to death upon 
the spot. After talking with the men and quiet- 
ing their discontent, he tried to prevent further 
trouble by keeping them busily at work about 
the fort. It was not long after this incident that 
La Salle came back from his search for the lost 
river. 

The party which journeyed forth upon the 
final expedition in January of 1687 was not 
large, but it was one which held great possibili- 
ties for trouble. There were stanch friends of 
La Salle in the party — among them his hot- 
headed nephew Moranget. But Duhaut also 
was there with his devoted tool L'Archeveque 
and his friend Liotot the surgeon — a man who, 

258 



WHEN HE LEFT THEM 

like Duhaut, had money invested in the colonial 
venture and was sorely put out at the progress 
of affairs. 

For more than two months the seventeen 
men traveled together across the prairies until, 
about the middle of March, they drew near to a 
place where La Salle on his former trip to the 
Cenis villages had hidden some supplies. 

They halted and La Salle sent out a party of 
men to bring the food into camp. It was on the 
fifteenth of the month that this party of seven 
set out — Duhaut and L'Archeveque, Liotot 
and Hiens the buccaneer, Teissier, a servant of 
La Salle's named Saget, and Nika, a faithful 
Shawnee who had crossed the ocean twice with 
La Salle and served him with undying devotion. 
They did not have far to go; but they found the 
food spoiled and unfit for use. 

On the way back the keen-eyed Shawnee saw 
two buffaloes, and, slipping along after them, 
killed them both. The men halted where they 
were and sent Saget back to camp to tell La 
Salle that if he would send horses they would 
bring the meat home. No one having returned 
by nightfall the six men slept upon the ground. 
The next day they cut up the buffaloes and 

2S9 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

placed the meat upon scaffolds to dry. Then, 
as was the custom of hunters, they laid aside 
the marrow bones and some other portions for 
their own use. 

Saget returned from the camp with three men 
— Moranget, De] Marie, and Meusnier — and 
with horses on which to pack the meat. Now 
Moranget, the nephew of La Salle, was not a 
favorite with the men to whom he came this 
day. When he had been ill for weeks on the 
shore of the bay from the arrow which rash ad- 
venture had lodged in his shoulder, Liotot the 
surgeon had cared for him with a patience which 
no man of the colony forgot; but when he was 
well again his surly temper vented itself upon 
even the doctor who had tended him. None the 
less did Duhaut dislike him, for he felt that his 
long month of hardship when lost in the wilds 
would not have come upon him if Moranget had 
been more patient in waiting for him. 

No March wind was ever more blustering 
than this young man as he rode into the little 
camp and saw the meat drying on the scaffolds 
and the men guarding the marrow bones and 
other bits for themselves. In an unreasoning 
fury he seized, not only the drying meat, but 

260 



WHEN HE LEFT THEM 

the men's own portion. He would take care of 
the meat thereafter, he said, and not let them 
eat it up as they had in the past. 

His words fell upon the hatred of these fierce 
men like a match tossed into gunpowder. The 
five drew apart and held council. Too long had 
they borne with this young upstart. Night fell, 
but the conspirators did not sleep. Liotot rose 
quietly, while Moranget, Nika, and Saget were 
fast asleep. Hatchet in hand the surgeon stole 
over beside them and with a single blow split 
open the head of the hated Moranget. Nika 
and Saget he treated in the same fashion. 

Meanwhile the other conspirators crouched 
with guns in hand ready to shoot if any one 
made resistance. Moranget was the only one to 
stir. Half sitting up he gasped and tried to 
speak. Then the murderers, to implicate the 
innocent De Marie, who had accompanied 
Moranget, forced him upon pain of death to 
finish the killing of his friend. 

Murder had lifted its horrid head at last in 
the voyage that had known almost every other 
disaster. Could it stop there? The men took 
counsel together. What would be their chance 
of life when the news reached their leader? 

261 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Their only safety now lay in going at once to 
the camp and killing both La Salle and Joutel. 
They started, but the river, swollen by a heavy 
rain, made them pause to construct a raft to 
transport their meat. While thus delayed they 
suddenly heard a gun fired as if in signal. 
Duhaut and his man L'Archeveque quickly 
crossed the river and a moment later they saw 
La Salle in the distance coming to seek them. 
Duhaut dropped quietly in the weeds to await 
his approach. La Salle, accompanied by the 
Recollet Douay, drew nearer, caught sight of 
L'Archeveque, and called out to him to know 
where Moranget was. Without removing his 
hat or otherwise saluting his astonished chief, 
L'Archeveque answered in an indifferent tone 
that he was along the river somewhere. La 
Salle started toward him with a rebuke. 
L'Archeveque answered with still more inso- 
lence. Then the crack of a gun came from the 
tall grass where Duhaut was hiding and La 
Salle, shot in the head, fell upon the ground. 
Without a word he died. 

Douay, speechless, stood still in his tracks. 
The others came running up, Liotot in scornful 
exultation crying out over the body of La Salle : 

262 



WHEN HE LEFT THEM 

*'There thou liest! Great Bashaw! There thou 
liest!" 

Hiens, rough man that he was, perhaps al- 
ready felt remorse — for La Salle had been 
good to him. Teissier the mariner, who had 
neither joined in the plot nor tried to prevent 
it, looked on while the men stripped the fallen 
leader and dragged his dead body into the 
bushes. 

There they left him, their leader, a prey 
to the birds of the air and the wolves of the 
plains, unburied in the far corner of the Great 
Valley of whose waters and prairies and people 
he would never dream again. 



XXX 

WHITE AND RED SAVAGES 

At the main camp on that fatal 19th of 
March, LaSalle had left Joutel with four oth- 
ers — the Abbe, young Cavelier, Pierre Talon, 
and another young boy called Barthelemy. 
From time to time during the day Joutel had 
lighted fires on rising ground near the camp so 
that La Salle, if he lost his way, could return 
easily. He was alone on one of these little hills 
toward evening, looking down upon the horses 
grazing in the field near by, when some one 
came running up to him in great excitement. 
It was L'Archeveque, a man who had always 
been kindly disposed toward Joutel. There was 
very bad news to tell, he said, confused and 
almost beside himself. 

"What is it?" asked Joutel in quick alarm. 

"La Salle is dead," he replied, "and also 
Moranget, his nephew, and two others." He 
added that they had been murdered and that 
the assassins had sworn to come on and kill 
Joutel as well. 

264 



WHITE AND RED SAVAGES 

Joutel stood dazed, scarcely knowing what to 
say or do. Should he fly to the woods and trust 
to Providence to guide him to civilization? 
Having come away from camp without his gun, 
life was scarcely more secure in the wilds than 
in the camp with the murderers. But, added 
L'Archeveque, the conspirators had decided on 
the way home not to kill Joutel unless he of- 
fered resistance. After all, perhaps it was bet- 
ter to risk death in the company of white men 
than in the wilderness alone; and so the two 
men turned back to the camp. 

There they found the Abbe Cavelier in a 
corner praying, and Father Douay still over- 
whelmed and not daring to speak to Joutel for 
fear of the murderers. The murderers had come 
wildly into camp and had seized the belongings 
of La Salle. Duhaut had assumed the place of 
leader. 

"You may kill me if you wish," said the 
Abbe, "but give me a half-hour to prepare for 
the end." 

But the white savages had had enough of kill- 
ing. If all would yield to the new leaders they 
might keep their lives. There was nothing else 
to do. Those who were not in the plot stood 

26s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

guard that night; and in the long hours Joutel 
and the Abbe, young Cavelier and Douay, 
made a solemn agreement to stand by each 
other until death — which now seemed very 
near to them. 

The next morning, under Duhaut's direction, 
the forlorn band of thirteen packed up their 
camp supplies and continued their journey 
toward the Cenis village. A conmion tie — the 
need of escape from the wilderness — held them 
together. Yet even that tie was honeycombed 
with fears and hates and distrusts. Joutel, his 
soul rising in rebellion, wanted to kill the mur- 
derers in their sleep, but the Abbe dissuaded 
him. 

With the guidance of Indians they soon 
crossed the Trinity River, and as they drew 
near to the town of the Cenis, four of the num- 
ber — Joutel, Liotot, Hiens, and Teissier — 
were sent in advance to buy food. They camped 
at night outside the village; and the next morn- 
ing they were met and escorted into the town 
by chiefs and elders dressed in great pomp with 
painted goatskins over their shoulders, crowns 
of feathers on their heads, and streaks of black 
and red paint on their faces. 

266 



WHITE AND RED SAVAGES 

The Cenis lived in round huts, shaped like 
old-fashioned beehives and made of a circle of 
poles bent over and lashed together at the top. 
The poles were interlaced with willow rods, and 
covered over with a thick thatch of grass. In 
the middle of the floor the Indians built their 
lodge-fire, which the several families living in 
the hut used in common. 

Joutel's three companions soon left him to 
trade with the villagers while they went back 
to camp. Alone in the village of people whom 
his experiences on the shores of the Gulf had 
taught him to fear, Joutel drove his little bar- 
gains and listened and nodded his head to the 
chiefs as they told him of the war they were 
getting ready to make upon their enemies. 

Fearful lest they should steal his merchan- 
dise, Joutel did not sleep well one night. He 
was tossing upon his robes about one o'clock 
when he heard some one move near him. Look- 
ing up, he saw, by the light of the fire in the 
center of the lodge, a man who was naked ex- 
cept for the tattoo marks upon his body. This 
stranger came and sat down by him, without 
saying a word. In his hands were a bow and two 
arrows. Joutel watched him a moment, then 

267 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

spoke. The man did not answer. Joutel reached 
for his pistol; whereupon the man rose, walked 
over to the fire, and again sat down. 

Utterly puzzled, Joutel rose from his bed and 
followed the man, studying him intently all 
the while. The man returned his gaze, then 
threw his arms about Joutel, embraced him, 
and spoke to him with French words. He was 
Ruter,one of La Salle's sailors who had deserted 
him, two years before, for the woods and the 
wild life of the Indian camps. Another deserter, 
Grollet, had been afraid to come with him to 
the grass house where Joutel slept, for fear 
of La Salle. 

For two years these white men had lived like 
the red men, they had married Indian women, 
and they had fought in the Indian wars. There 
was little now to distinguish Ruter from his 
dusky companions — except that long-buried 
yearning for his own people which made him 
come to Joutel and listen eagerly to his tale of 
adventures. The story of La Salle's death 
seemed to affect him deeply, and for a long time 
in the passing night the two men talked be- 
side the fire in the Indian lodge. Later, Grol- 
let also came to see and talk to Joutel. 

268 



WHITE AND RED SAVAGES 

For several days Joutel stayed in the village. 
Then messengers came from the camp to say 
that the leaders had decided to return to the 
fort on the Bay of St. Louis and there build a 
ship and sail for the West Indies. With what 
provisions he had secured, Joutel went back 
to the camp of the murderers, where he and 
the Abbe took counsel together. It was intoler- 
able to continue life in the same camp with 
those who had killed La Salle, and so they made 
up their minds to leave their murderous com- 
panions and go on with those who had not been 
in the plot, toward the Mississippi River. They 
told Duhaut they were too fatigued to make 
the trip back to the Gulf and would remain 
with the Cenisjto which Duhaut finally agreed. 

Hiens and several others, who had been sent 
to the village for horses on which to carry sup- 
plies back to the fort, had not yet returned. 
While they were waiting, one of the French de- 
serters, who knew of the true plans of the Abbe 
and Joutel, told them to Duhaut and added that 
he believed the Mississippi to be not far off to 
the northeast; whereupon Duhaut changed his 
plan and decided that he too would go to the 
Mississippi. • 

269 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

News of Duhaut's decision soon reached 
Hiens at the Cenis village, and in a few days he 
came back to the camp, accompanied by Ruter 
and others. Hiens walked directly to Duhaut 
and declared that it was not safe to go to the 
Mississippi and on to the white settlements. 
As for himself, he would not go, and he de- 
manded his share of the goods. When Duhaut 
refused, Hiens raised his gun and fired, saying, 
"You wretch! You murdered my master!" 
Duhaut fell dead. Almost at the same instant 
Ruter, the half-savage deserter, opened fire 
upon Liotot and mortally wounded him. Thus 
did the murderers of La Salle and Moranget 
come to their end. 

Hiens was now in command of the party, 
which had decreased to eleven. The old buc- 
caneer had promised the Cenis to go to their 
wars with them and, with Ruter and Grollet 
and three or four other Frenchmen, started out 
with the exultant Indian warriors, leaving the 
Abbe and his party in the village with the 
women and old men. Late in May the warriors 
returned, flushed with a great victory which the 
guns of the white allies had enabled them to 
win. 

270 



WHITE AND RED SAVAGES 

The Abbe and Joutel and their little group 
now asked leave to separate and try to make 
their way across to the Mississippi. Hiens gave 
his consent with much reluctance. As for him- 
self he did not care to risk his life going back to 
civilized people; and the wild savage life in the 
Indian villages held him with a strong fascina- 
tion. He divided supplies and merchandise with 
those who were leaving, gave them six horses 
to carry their goods, and with much advice set 
them on their way. Thus they took their de- 
parture — a band of seven — to make the last 
long march toward the settlements of white 
men. Hiens and L'Archeveque, Meusnier, and 
Pierre Talon cast in their lot with the Indians. 

Innumerable were the adventures of the 
seven travelers. Town after town they passed, 
stopping often to smoke the pipe of peace, trade 
merchandise, and gather news of the way. One 
morning De Marie, while bathing in the river 
near an Indian village, was drowned before the 
Indians could rescue him. The six moved on, 
Indian guides leading them, until at last with a 
great feeling of joy they came to the establish- 
ment of Couture on the Arkansas. 

271 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

Couture was the last man in America to 
whom they related the story of La Salle's death. 
The Abbe decided to keep it a secret from both 
the Indians and from Tonty, and not even to 
tell it in Canada, but to take the news across 
the seas with them to the court of France. 
Dreading that young Barthelemy would dis- 
close their secret, they left him with Couture. 
The young boy told many things to the men at 
the Arkansas post. And now Couture was pour- 
ing out the whole tale to the commander of 
Fort St. Louis on the Illinois. 



XXXI 

tonty's heroic venture 

Couture had added the fatal sequel to the 
story of the Abbe and Joutel. Tonty heard it 
with mingled despair and rage. He thought of 
La Salle lying dead and unburied among the 
weeds beside a river hundreds of leagues in the 
wilderness ; and he thought of the five men who 
had come to his fort and withheld the truth 
from him, the trusted lieutenant of their master. 
So La Salle was in good health when he parted 
from them on the other side of the Cenis vil- 
lages ! He remembered now the strange silence 
of Father Douay. The friar could^not say that 
La Salle was well when he left him. 

But the anger of Tonty rose most strongly 
against that priestly brother — the Abbe who 
had prevented Joutel from taking vengeance 
upon the murderers, who had accepted Tonty's 
hospitality all through the winter while deceiv- 
ing him, and who had run off with his secret to 
France after begging supplies under a letter 
from his dead brother. 

273 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

But what of the Httle garrison on the shore of 
the Gulf, the forlorn fragment of the colony 
under Gabriel Barbier at the other Fort St. 
Louis? Tonty thought of Father Membre and 
of the hardships they had gone through together. 
Was it too late to save them ? A year had gone 
by since the Abbe and his party had reached 
the fort on the Illinois. It was almost two years 
since they had left Barbier; yet the colony might 
still be alive. The master was gone and there 
was no one left to save them but himself. 

Perhaps in making ready to lead a rescue 
party to the fort on the Gulf, Tonty forgot some 
of his anger at' the Abbe. Moreover, the Indian 
tribes between the Illinois and the sea had 
given the Abbe assurances that they would 
rally to an attack upon the Spaniards of the 
Southwest. Possibly he could do more than 
save the colony : it might be that he could fulfill 
the long cherished hope of La Salle by gathering 
a force of French and Indians and invading the 
territory of the hated Spaniards. 

Twice Tonty had gone to the Gulf — once 
with La Salle and once in search of him. Now 
all that remained for him to do was to rescue 
the survivors whom La Salle's death had left 

274 



TONTY'S HEROIC VENTURE 

almost without hope. He sent Couture back on 
the trail by which the Abbe and his party had 
come, to get what information he could; but 
Couture's canoe was wrecked a hundred leagues 
from the fort and he returned without news. 

Then Tonty bought an Indian dugout and 
taking with him four or five Frenchmen, a 
Shawnee, and two Indian slaves, was on his way 
early in December. On the 17th, a village of 
Illinois Indians at the mouth of the river saw 
him go by; and a month later, near the mouth 
of the Arkansas, the Kappa tribe welcomed 
him with great joy and danced the calumet be- 
fore him. He could not stop long at the Arkan- 
sas towns, but pushed on down the river to the 
country of the Taensas and the Natchez. 

With a band of Taensas he left the Missis- 
sippi and struck off toward the west. After trav- 
eling some days across country they came upon 
the village of the Nachitoches, where they dis- 
tributed presents and concluded peace with the 
Indians. Taking guides at this point they went 
up the Red River till they reached the village 
of the Cadadoquis, which'lay upon the route by 
which the Abbe and Joutel and their compan- 
ions had struggled out of the wilderness. Here 

27s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

the Indians told Tonty that Hiens and his 
party were farther on at a village known as 
Nabedache. These Nabedaches were the same 
Indians whom Joutel and the Abbe called the 
Cenis. At last Tonty was nearing the object of 
his expedition; a few more days and he would 
join the fragment of the party of La Salle and 
push on to the Gulf. 

But what was this murmuring? The French- 
men flatly refused to go farther; only one of 
them would stay with their leader. Tonty 
would push on nevertheless. With his one white 
man, the Shawnee, the two slaves, and five 
Cadadoquis as guides, he took up his march 
again early in April. The Frenchman strayed 
from the party and it was two long days before 
he found them again. Meanwhile, in crossing a 
river he had lost most of their powder — a seri- 
ous misfortune. 

Before the end of the month Tonty and his 
party reached the Nabedache village where two 
years before the Abbe and his companions had 
left Hiens and his crew among the Indians. The 
Indians told various stories of the Frenchmen 
for whom Tonty was searching. Some said that 
Hiens and his party had gone oflf with their 

276 



TONTY'S HEROIC VENTURE 

chiefs to fight the Spaniards ; while others told 
him that three had been killed by another tribe 
and the rest had gone away in search of arrow- 
heads. Tonty himself came to the firm conclu- 
sion that the Cenis had killed the survivors. 

He was now many leagues beyond the Red 
River and within a few days' journey of the 
scene of La Salle's murder. Eighty leagues 
more would take him to the fort on the Bay of 
St. Louis. Tonty begged for guides, but the 
Cenis would give him none. Hiens and his men 
were not to be found. He looked at his remain- 
ing supply of gunpowder, so necessary for pro- 
viding food as well as defense. It was almost 
gone. Even Tonty could go no farther. With 
heavy heart he gave the Indians some hatchets 
and glass beads in exchange for Spanish horses 
and turned back toward the Mississippi. 

It was the loth of May when they reached 
the Cadadoquis village on the Red River, and 
here they stopped for a week to rest their 
horses. Then with an Indian guide they started 
once more for the Coroa village. In all the ten 
years Tonty had spent in the wilds he never had 
suffered such hardships — not even during his 
bitter experiences in the winter of 1680, when 

277 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

with Father Membre and his young French 
companions he had struggled out of the clutches 
of the Iroquois in the valley of the Illinois and 
fought his way against cold and starvation to 
the friendly Pottawattomie village on Green 
Bay. 

While leading one of the horses by the bridle 
across a swamp the guide imagined himself pur- 
sued by an alligator and tried to climb a tree. 
In his haste he entangled the bridle of Tonty's 
horse, which was drowned. Fearful of punish- 
ment the guide made off to his people, leaving 
the party to find their way alone. 

With Tonty in the lead they crossed, by one 
means or another, eight or ten swollen streams. 
Everywhere the country seemed drowned, for 
the spring freshets were on. They gave up their 
horses and carried their own baggage, wading 
day after day in water often up to their knees. 
They had to sleep and light their fires and cook 
their food on the trunks of fallen trees placed 
together. Only once did they find anything 
like dry land in the endless leagues of flooded 
country. 

Their food gave out and they ate their dogs. 
There was nothing left and no wild animals 

278 



TONTY'S HEROIC VENTURE 

were to be found in all the wet dreariness. One, 
two, three days passed with nothing to eat — 
only the water everywhere. On the evening of 
the third day, the 14th of July, they came at 
length to the Coroa village, where the chiefs 
feasted them for as many days as they had 
fasted. Here they found two of the men who 
had deserted ; and toward the end of the month 
they all went on together to the towns at the 
mouth of the Arkansas River. The months of 
hardship had sapped even Tonty's endurance, 
and now for nearly two weeks he lay sick with a 
fever among these kindly Indians. 

It was late in September, 1689, when Tonty 
finally reached the towering rock at Fort St. 
Louis and climbed to its friendly summit to 
rest. In the weary ten months' expedition he 
had neither found the bones of his friend, nor 
reached his fort on the Gulf, nor led an invading 
force into the land of the Spaniard. But he 
had done all that lay in his power to rescue his 
leader's last garrison. 

The Abbe had left his own brother unburied 
in the wilds, had deliberately for more than a 
year delayed any effort to rescue the survivors 
at the fort, and had gone off to France on funds 

279 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

obtained by fraud and deceit. But Tonty, 
almost alone, had braved every peril and hard- 
ship for nearly a year in a last courageous but 
unsuccessful eifort to save the pitiful remnant 
of his friend's ill-fated colony on the Bay of St. 
Louis. 



XXXII 

THE PITIFUL REMNANT 

It was perhaps as well that Tonty was com- 
pelled to turn back, for he could have done little 
good even if he had been able to press on and 
reach the Bay of St. Louis. When he was at the 
Cenis or Nabedache village pleading for guides, 
the Spaniards had already marched from Mex- 
ico to attack the French fort and its little garri- 
son, and were encamped on the hill where La 
Salle had left Barbier in charge of the sur- 
vivors. But others had preceded them, and 
they found the buildings in ruins. Scattered 
here and there were boxes and bits of supplies ; 
doors were unhinged, barrels broken open, and 
in the near-by meadow were dead bodies of 
Frenchmen. 

On May i, into the camp of the Spaniards 
walked two men. Painted and savage and 
dressed in buffalo hides, these two strangers 
were L'Archeveque and GroUet, the servant of 
Duhaut, and Ruter's half-savage companion. 
They had come to give themselves up to 

281 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

the Spaniards rather than endure longer their 
wretched existence among the Indians. 

Three months before^ so they told the Span- 
ish officer, the meager garrison under Barbier, 
just recovering from a siege of smallpox, was 
set upon by howling Karankawan Indians who 
massacred the inhabitants and pillaged the fort. 
Gabriel Barbier and Father Membre both were 
killed outright. Barbier's wife with a three- 
months-old babe at her breast was saved for a 
time by the Indian women; but the warriors, 
returning and finding her still alive, murdered 
her also, and, seizing the baby by the feet, beat 
its brains out against a tree. 

Thus the colony had paid for the offense of 
Moranget and his men when they had first 
landed on the red men's shores and robbed the 
native camp of canoes and blankets. After the 
massacre, L'Archeveque and GroUet claimed 
that they had come to the fort and buried four- 
teen of the dead. 

Many years later there came to the ears of 
Tonty a remarkable tale of some who had es- 
caped the killing at the fort on the Bay. Among 
those who had remained with Barbier was the 
widow Talon, whose husband had been lost on 

282 



THE PITIFUL REMNANT 

one of La Salle's first expeditions to hunt the 
river. One of her daughters had died of sickness 
at the fort. Her oldest boy Pierre had been 
taken by La Salle to the village of the Cenis to 
learn their language. Though she did not know 
it on the day of the massacre, Pierre had for a 
year and a half been running wild like the In- 
dians themselves, in the Cenis country. A chief 
of the Cenis had taken him, together with 
young Meusnier, under his own protection. 

But the widow still kept four of the children 
with her in the fort. Then came that awful day 
when the Indians fell upon them. Before the 
eyes of her children the widow was killed. But 
the Indian women took compassion upon the 
four little ones, carried them off on their backs, 
and adopted them into their own families. The 
oldest was a young girl named Mary Magda- 
lene Talon, and her younger brothers were Jean 
Baptiste, Robert, and Lucien — one of whom, 
now a boy of four, had been born on the way 
over from France. With these four the squaws 
had rescued a young boy called Eustache 
B reman. 

In the lodges of Indians the five children 
were brought up by their foster mothers with 

283 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

as much care as the dusky children of the tribe. 
For many years the girl and her young brothers 
lived as the Indians lived. They ate meat as 
their red brothers did — raw, sun-baked, or half- 
cooked. The boys learned to run and to ride 
and to draw the bow; and like the Indians them- 
selves they learned to run to the nearest stream 
each morning at break of day and plunge naked 
into the water, whatever the season might be. 

One day the Karankawas took sharp thorns 
and pricked holes through the skin of the arms 
and faces and other parts of the bodies of these 
French children. Then, having burned in the 
fire a walnut branch, they crushed the charcoal 
into powder, mixed it with a little water, and 
forced it into the holes in their fair skin. It was 
very painful at first, but the pain soon passed 
away and then each adopted child appeared 
tattooed with marks that no washing could 
take out. 

Jean Baptiste and young Breman were soon 
old enough to be off with the braves. Perhaps 
the only habit of life which they could not learn 
was the eating of human flesh. Once the war- 
riors fell upon a tribe of the Tonkawans and 
killed many, and for three days Jean Baptiste 

284 



THE PITIFUL REMNANT 

went without food because his foster people 
gave him nothing to eat save the flesh of the 
men they had slain. 

Meanwhile among the Cenis or Nabedaches, 
Hiens and his party had been having strange 
experiences — fighting in the savage wars and 
living in the round thatched huts of the In- 
dians. But it was not in the nature of things for 
this band of survivors to live peaceably among 
themselves. Ruter, the half-savage deserter 
who had talked one night with Joutel by the 
Cenis lodge-fire, quarreled with Hiens (so came 
the tale to Tonty) and killed the old buccaneer. 
As for Ruter, never more was he heard from. 
His companion, GroUet, and the miserable 
L'Archeveque, tiring of their life among the 
Indians, had already given themselves up to 
the Spaniards. 

There remained, under the protection of the 
Cenis chief, Pierre Talon and his comrade Meus- 
nier. One day an Indian friend came to them 
with warning on his lips: the Spaniards, cruel 
enemies of their countrymen, were marching 
into the Indian country looking for these ref- 
ugee white men. In fear they fled from town 
to town; but their flight was in vain, for it 

28s 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

was not long before they had fallen into the 
hands of the Spanish horsemen. Their captors 
marched them back to the village of the Cenis, 
hoping to find more whites there. They were 
disappointed, but during their brief stop they 
became so impressed with the Indians that they 
left three Spanish Franciscan friars and built 
them a chapel in the village. Two of the Span- 
ish officers spoke the French language as well as 
their own; Talon and Meusnier had become 
familiar with the tongue of the Cenis ; and so by 
means of a four-sided conversation the friars 
learned from the Indians a few words of their 
language before their men took the captives 
away to the southwest. 

Pierre was greatly astonished at all this. 
These men seemed to be Christians even if they 
were Spanish, and instead of cruelty they had 
bestowed upon him only kindness. If the Span- 
iards were like this, he would have them cap- 
ture also his sister and younger brothers. And 
so he told the Spaniards that he had three bro- 
thers and a sister living with the Karankawas, 
down near the Bay of St. Louis. 

On the way back to Mexico the Spanish 
troops with swords and guns and horses rode 

286 



THE PITIFUL REMNANT 

into the village where the Talon children were. 
Jean Baptiste Talon and Eustache Breman 
they did not find; but Mary Magdalene and 
Robert and Lucien were there. The oflficers 
agreed to give the Indians who had fostered 
them a horse for each child. But when they 
came to the girl Mary, who was older and 
larger, the Indians protested; for they thought 
that they ought to get two horses for her. The 
dispute grew hot and both sides sprang to arms. 
The Spanish guns spoke, two or three Indians 
fell dead and the others fled terrified. The sub- 
dued Indians finally gave up the girl for one 
horse, and the Spaniards rode out of the village, 
after giving the Indians some tobacco to ease 
the hearts of those whose dead lay upon the 
ground. 

The foster mothers mourned over their lost 
children, especially the younger ones, for in the 
years of their stay with the tribe they had 
found warm places in Indian hearts. Jean Bap- 
tiste and young Breman remained for another 
year with their Indian people. Then there came 
another Spanish troop and carried them off. 
Again the Indians wept and urged young Talon 
to escape as soon as possible and come back to 

287 



THE MAN WITH THE IRON HAND 

them and bring with him as many Spanish 
horses as he could. He promised, but they 
never saw him again. Thus the Talons came to 
Mexico. 

Pierre and Jean Talon, after many years with 
the Spaniards, came at last to their own coun- 
try of France. Long before them the Abbe, 
Joutel, and their three companions had also 
come home to the land of the lilies. 

In the wild reaches of the Great Valley there 
remained little trace of the last expedition of 
La Salle to found a colony at the foot of what 
Joutel had come to call the fatal river. Up and 
down the broad highway that ran through the 
valley from north to south, red men pushed 
their wooden dugouts or bark canoes. With 
moccasined feet they trailed the deer through 
the woods and followed the track of the shaggy 
beasts of the plains. And at break of day beside 
the enemy's camp they sent up the cry of war 
quite as they and their fathers had done for 
many hundred years. From one end of the val- 
ley to the other the white men had traveled ; and 
yet, as the track of a canoe dies out of the 
water or the shadow of a flying bird passes over 
the plain and is gone, so now it seemed that the 

288 



THE PITIFUL REMNANT 

trail of the white men's passing had vanished 
out of the valley and that the dream that had 
led to their coming had been lost with the 
dreamer beneath the waving grass of the 
Southern plains. 

Yet down by the Gulf a Quinipissa chief 
guarded year by year a precious letter, waiting, 
and not in vain, to give it to a white man who 
should come into the mouth of the river from 
the sea. And, far in the north, on a high rock 
beside the river Illinois, the Man with the Iron 
Hand, known and loved and feared by all the 
tribes, kept alive year after year the vision of 
his chief. His days were to be long in the valley 
he loved and his services many to his king and 
his Indian friends ; and the time was yet to come 
when he would see the flag of France waving 
over a colony of Frenchmen at the mouth of 
the river which had run like a silver thread 
through a quarter of a century of dreams and 
deeds. 

THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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